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Google has announced a new section for YouTube called YouTube Gaming. YouTube Gaming is – as the name suggests – designed for gaming content in mind.

YouTube Gaming aims to be the social platform for gamers and game streamers much like Twitch.tv already is. YouTube says it offers over 25 000 individual games' pages that feature videos and/or streams.

The news didn't come totally out of blue since Google has been rumored to have a game streaming focused YouTube section in the works. It was also reported to be interested in buying Twitch but Amazon was the one to close the deal last year.

According to the website YouTube Gaming will debut in the US and UK this summer.

An acclaimed music critic and analyst Bob Lefsetz has published his (strong) opinions about Apple's new music service. The former record label consultant and now a blogging analyst Lefsetz says the service doesn't bring anything new to table.

"It's toast," starts the rant and continues to describe how the new Apple Music is as good as dead before it has even been released to the public. In his Lefsetz Letter blog he says Jimmy Iovine, the former record label mogul recruited by Apple, is not the innovator Apple needs to revolutionize music business.

He believes it's the likes of Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek do the innovating and revolutionizing. "Daniel Ek's story is more interesting than Iovine's. Ek slayed piracy, Iovine sold crappy headphones as fashion items," says Lefsetz. According to the critic in modern era the "faceless techies" are the winners, not the corporate bullies.

The 24/7 radio station Beats 1 isn't what people want, if it were the original Beats would have succeeded. All in all Apple hasn't realized what people want. He acknowledges that Apple Music probably won't completely fail though, but says it won't kill YouTube or even dominate the streaming space.

Every company in the mobile space seems to now have it, a smartwatch. You have the Motorola 360, the Samsung Galaxy Gear, the LG Watch Urbane, and of course the Apple Watch. There was also in the works a device that could have been called the Nokia Watch – or even the Microsoft Watch.

New information leaked by a Microsoft employee suggests that Nokia had been working on a smartwatch resembling Lumia smartphones before the Microsoft acquisition. Codenamed Moonraker, the smartwatch was destined to launch alongside Lumia 930, which was released in last year's April.

We never saw Moonraker but Microsoft did release a wearable they call Microsoft Band.

According to The Verge the leaked pictures are not concept pictures but actual marketing material that was never used. As the pictures show the watch was able to make calls, show emails and play music.

In its golden days RIM was a force to be reckoned with. Since it has changed its name to reflect their line of smartphones, BlackBerry. It went all in with BlackBerry 10, the operating system released in 2013 – delayed time after time.

Now it seems that soon there might be one less reason to call the company BlackBerry. According to sources cited by Reuters

BlackBerry might be switching to Android. It is not revealed whether the company would abandon BlackBerry operating system though. Reuters says that the four sources are close to the matter and need to stay anonymous.

The company's BlackBerry brand became synonymous with messaging oriented and QWERTY keyboard equipped smartphones. BlackBerry 10 was meant to fight for the touchscreen interested masses but flopped and was never a contender against Apple and Google.

Rovio has teamed up with Sega to try to revive two series, mashing up Angry Birds and Sonic for 'Angry Birds Sonic Dash Epic.'

Characters from the game Angry Birds Epic will now appear in the mobile game Sonic Dash and Sonic Dash players will earn coins that will allow them to unlock the characters Red, Chuck and Bomb from Angry Birds Epic.

The promotion is for a limited time, but whatever characters you unlock will stay in your games forever.

Sonic Dash has ben available for two years, but had generally mediocre reviews while Angry Birds Epic has been one of the least played games from the Angry Birds series.

It will be interesting to see if the promotion gives both games the boost they need.

LEGO has unveiled the first trailer for their upcoming "LEGO Marvel's Avengers" game, which looks to give Marvel and LEGO fans the best of both worlds.

Reads the brief bio: "Play as Earth's Mightiest Heroes in their quest to save the world while reliving some of the most amazing moments from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including the famed Battle of New York between the Avengers and Super Villain Loki as seen in "Marvel's The Avengers."

The game promises some good comedy (Hulk taking selfies), and of course, a lot of action.

You can get the latest LEGO game for PC, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Vita and even Wii U later this year.

Finnish casual gaming company Rovio has unveiled "Angry Birds Fight," a new game that mixes elements of an RPG with a matching puzzle game akin to hit games like Candy Crush.

The game soft-launched out in Asia three months ago and was successful enough to warrant a global rollout following three million downloads.

Fight lets gamers play a match-three puzzler but it also adds a leveling system that is much more reminiscent of an RPG-style game and includes power up like new weapons that can boost your "attack" stats ahead of a "battle."

The game is available now for iOS and Android.

Check out some gameplay here:

Netflix has announced that the base price for their streaming service has been raised for the UK market.

Previously priced at £6.99 per month, the standard HD service will now set you back £7.49 per month.

Current subscribers will get to keep their current rate until May 2016, but new subscribers will see the higher price immediately.

With all the new original content including Sense8, new seasons of Orange is the New Black and plenty more, it is hard to see subscribers canceling for just an extra 50 pence a month.

Apple has confirmed that Apple Music will stream at 256kbps, lower than the industry standard 320kbps for premium subscribers.

Spotify, Google, Tidal and even Beats Music before it was acquired all streamed at 320kbps but Apple has long offered their tracks via iTunes in AAC format at 256k.

That being said, the difference between the two bitrates is usually not noticeable unless you are using professional audio equipment, but let's face it, most Apple Music subscribers will be using an iPhone and a set of Apple headphones.

Of course, the lower bitrate will also lead to somewhat lower data consumption, which is always a positive with tiny carrier data plans.

Apple has announced the latest beta of their Xcode software will allow anyone to sideload apps to their iOS device, at no charge, without approval from Apple.

Says Apple: "Xcode 7 and Swift now make it easier for everyone to build apps and run them directly on their Apple devices. Simply sign in with your Apple ID, and turn your idea into an app that you can touch on your iPad, iPhone, or Apple Watch. Download Xcode 7 beta and try it yourself today. Program membership is not required."

While Apple has highlighted its legitimate uses, developers have quickly found that banned apps, games and even emulators and torrent clients can now be added to your device. For example, one developer was able to successfully send the Game Boy emulator app GBA4iOS to their iPhone by importing the source code in Xcode and sending it to the iPhone. You will need the original source code to be able to use other people's apps, so piracy will be minimal even with the relaxed rules.

If you are interesting in testing your own apps (or something else), try out Xcode here: Xcode 7 Beta

A few days before the company was expected to unveil full details and press shots of their upcoming consumer Rift headset, Oculus VR appears to have accidentally leaked a few images.

The company revamped their website and posted a pre-order page image that appears to show the final consumer version of the Rift.

Oculus was quick to deny that the leaked images show the final hardware, but what we see is quite different from anything we have seen in the past. "Everything in it is ancient, certainly nowhere close to final," founder Palmer Luckey wrote on Reddit. "Enjoy checking it out, at this point, but don't expect everything to carry through to" to the final release.

Among the details we now know from the leaked image are that the position imaging camera is mounted to a pole, and that the headset will also have a forward-facing camera. Additionally, a gamepad will be included in the box.

Wow. Another year has passed and we're celebrating our site's 16th birthday today. I still remember our first years: a site strictly focused on digital multimedia, i.e. MP3 technology and DVD tech. As technologies have evolved, so has our site and its content.

I would like to simply thank all of our staff members, moderators and users for keeping this site alive for all these years. I expect more equally great years to follow.

Thank you!

-Petteri Pyyny, CEO (@pyyny)
AfterDawn Oy

P.S. For the "this gets asked every year" question: here's the oldest screenshot of our site that we know of, from Summer of 1999:

Apple has announced today that Safari will soon be able to find what tab is playing audio so they can mute it, close it or just get back to it quicker.

Apple's Craig Federighi made the announcement during the company's introduction to OS X El Capitan.

The tab with audio will have a little speaker icon, just like Chrome users have had for the past few months. Additionally, you'll be able to pin tabs, another feature that has been available on Chrome for a long time.

During today's keynote, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the App Store had surpassed 100 billion app downloads since the store launched in 2008.

In that same time, the company has paid out $30 billion to developers, a number significantly higher than figures Android, Amazon or Microsoft can boast.

Last year, the company announced it had shipped over 1 billion iOS devices to customers, shipping nearly 200 million devices from the time of WWDC 2014.

Casual gaming company Rovio has signed a deal with giant toymaker Lego to launch a line of 'Angry Birds' blocks.

The company, which was once wildly popular, has seen revenue and profits slip as its licensing business has stalled and the Angry Birds games have taken a back seat to other games like Candy Crush and Clash of Clans.

Lego's line of Angry Birds toys will launch in spring 2016, lining up with the premiere of the feature-length Angry Birds movie.

The company recently laid off 14 percent of its workforce after earnings fell 73 percent last year.