Lenovo ThinkPad T431s Ultrabook: refined exterior, widened trackpad, shipping in April for $949  —  Lenovo's taking the wraps off of its newest ThinkPad here at Engadget Expand, but in fact, the T431s represents more than just a minor spec bump.  It's actually the first ThinkPad borne out of Lenovo's latest …

Loren Brichter, a High Priest of App Design  —  PHILADELPHIA—More than 2,500 miles from Silicon Valley, in a small home office with a dog bed under the desk, sits a man on the cutting edge of the apps boom.  —  Loren Brichter isn't a household name.  Nor are the mobile apps he has built …

Apple is Losing The War - Of Words  —  Besides its ads, Apple says very little, confident numbers will do the talking.  This no longer works as others have seized the opportunity to drive the narrative.  —  The day before Samsung's big Galaxy S4 announcement, Apple's VP of Marketing …

My Amazon bestseller made me nothing  —  My novel shot to the top of the site's bestseller list last summer.  You won't believe how little I got paid  —  In one more week I was going to be a millionaire.  —  At least, that was the rumor circulating around my wife's family.

Panasonic considers exiting from plasma TVs: Nikkei  —  (Reuters) - Japan's Panasonic Corp is leaning towards withdrawing from plasma television operations as part of a downsizing of its television business over three years starting next fiscal year, the Nikkei newspaper said on Monday.

Sony Xperia SP announced, we go hands-on (video)  —  While the Sony's Xperia Z tablet and smartphone occupy its high-end Android selection, it's now the turn of the middleweights.  Say hello to the Xperia SP, a 4.6-inch phone that ties together the some of the features (and design cues) …

Verizon Seeks to Shake Up Fees for TV Channels  —  FiOS Operator Presses Smaller Media Firms for Deals Based on Audience Size  —  Verizon Communications Inc. is proposing to shake up the pay-television business based on a simple premise: it wants to tie the fees it pays to carry TV channels to how many people actually watch them.

BlackBerry chief lays out survival plan and says iPhone is old news  —  BlackBerry chief exectutive officer Thorsten Heins has said the rapidly advancing global smartphone market has left Apple's iPhone in its wake, and predicted his company would have 100,000 native apps available …

Mainstream support for WP 8 ends July 2014, WP 7.8 September 2014  —  Plaffo.com reports on the life cycle support dates of Windows Phone 7.8 and Windows Phone 8.  —  According to the table Windows Phone 7.8 will receive security updates until 9 September 2014, while Windows Phone 8 will sunset on the 8th July 2014.

Google Keep note-taking app spotted in Drive before disappearing  —  Everyone might be focused on the services Google is scrapping as part of its spring cleaning, but it looks like there's at least one new (or rather, renewed) service on the way.  Android Police reports that a new note-taking …