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Whenever McDonald’s un-retires its McRib sandwich, it’s an event. People react quite favorably to the boneless pork slab that gets lathered in barbecue sauce. So much so, in fact, McDonald’s has done a good job capitalizing on the sandwich’s popularity and they play it up a great deal with their associated marketing pushes, as you can clearly see:

Apparently, after years of letting McDonald’s bask in the glow that is the American population’s desire for pork sandwich bliss, a contender has decided to step up and grab some of that spotlight for themselves. At least, that’s plan according Burger King, and the reports of the upcoming release of what’s being called the “McRib buster,” aka, the BK Rib Sandwich. While the official release has yet to be broadcast, information about Burger King’s upcoming summer menu, which will feature the McRib contender, have been hitting the `tubes:

Burger King on Thursday will unveil its 2013 summer menu plans, highlighted by a new, limited-time BK Rib Sandwich, which is boneless like McRib — has a tangy sauce and comes with sweet bread and butter pickles. It will be sold nationally beginning May 21.

BK’s other summer roll-outs include a return of Memphis Pulled Pork sandwiches, a line of Carolina BBQ sandwiches and sweet potato fries. It also will introduce a new BBQ Chicken Salad and line of Oreo-infused desserts. All of the products, including the rib sandwich, will be available only though the summer.

An image of the upcoming delicacy:

As the description of the BK Rib Sandwich reveals–”has a tangy sauce and comes with sweet bread and butter pickles”–if you can’t beat the McRib, why not copy it? Whatever the case, I just hope the upcoming marketing push for BK’s summer menu/McRib contender features Darius “Hootie” Rucker:

TED Talks are available in 100 languages, from Albanian to Vietnamese, thanks to the tireless work of our volunteer translators. So far, more than 10,000 volunteers have created upwards of 40,000 talk translations — and every week, the TED Blog brings you a Q&A with one of them. Today, meet Khalid Marbou.

1. Where do you live and what do you do by day?

I was born and raised in Tiznit, Morocco, and live in Cyberjaya, Malaysia, where I’m pursuing a bachelor’s degree in nanotechnology engineering. Aside from my studies, I spend most of my day online keeping in touch with friends and relatives — blogging, translating, reading and working on different projects in Malaysia and Morocco. 

2. What drew you to TED?

Many factors made me into a TED fanatic, but I would say that the most influential of them is my constant search for inspiration and intellectual stimulation. Before TED, I found small doses of inspiration reading novels and watching movies, but when I first discovered TED, it gave me a jolt. It’s never ceased to inspire me to this day.

3. What was the first talk you translated and how did you pick it?

Charles Fleischer insists: All things are MoleedsMy first talk was Charles Fleischer’s “All things are Moleeds.” Most of the other translators avoided the talk because of its complexity and richness – it has made-up words and expressions — but I liked Charles’ sense of humor and wanted to share it with my friends, so they could understand it. I picked it up both as a challenge and as a test to see how prepared I would be for complex translation tasks. I managed to finish it within a day, and picked up another talk right away.

4. What have been your favorite talks to translate? Why?

Beau Lotto + Amy O’Toole: Science is for everyone, kids includedI would say Beau Lotto + Amy O’Toole’s talk: “Science is for everyone, kids included.” First, because I am very passionate about science communication and involving kids in scientific activities. I’ve been working on implementing similar initiatives in Moroccan schools and raising awareness about the subject in general. And second, having attended TEDGlobal2012, I saw Beau and Amy onstage and was tremendously amazed and excited. I said to myself, “That’s a talk I want to spend hours translating.” And I did.

5. Which talk was the most difficult for you to translate and why?

The most challenging talk for me was indeed that first talk I translated, “All things are Moleeds.”

6. What’s a phrase in your language that you wish would catch on globally?

I’d like to share a quote from my native language, Tamazight:

“أورا تمون أبلا إيح ترعي”

Which translates into:

“It won’t get organized unless it first gets all messy.”

We have seen mixed reports regarding BlackBerry’s performance with the BlackBerry Q10, its first QWERTY toting BlackBerry 10 smartphone. Most industry watchers seems to think early Q10 sales have been strong, though a few analysts have strayed from the pack. RBC Capital Markets’ Mark Sue is in the first camp, though he noted in a new research note on Monday Q10 sales might not blow us away. Regardless, however, the analyst says BlackBerry has already succeeded in one respect: The Q10 is buying BlackBerry some time to turn things around.

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It’s clear that Wal-Mart Stores wants to stay on top as a major online retailer in the United States and abroad, as it takes steps to turn stores into fulfillment centers and bolster its virtual capabilities. What hasn’t been clear is how that transition will look, or how long it will take.

@WalmartLabs gave people a glimpse at its playbook on Tuesday by disclosing in a blog post the acquisition of OneOps, a finalist in the LaunchPad competition at GigaOM’s 2012 Structure conference, as well as Tasty Labs, whose CEO, Joshua Schachter, founded Delicious.

Terms of the acquisitions were not disclosed.

According to the @WalmartLabs blog post, OneOps has “developed a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) capability that enables us to significantly accelerate our PaaS and Private Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) strategies.” The OneOps acquisition could strengthen Wal-Mart’s chances of rapidly building, tinkering with, testing and deploying new applications onto walmart.com and other online retail sites affiliated with the company, such as samsclub.com. The unification of the back-end components of many sites is an ongoing project for Wal-Mart.

As for the Tasty Labs buy, it could lead to additional social experiences for site visitors. Wal-Mart has been incorporating social elements into its sites, such as pins from Pinterest as well as recently reviewed and fast-moving items. But with Tasty Labs’ Jig product, customers have been able to type in their needs and get responses about products that could help meet said needs.

However Wal-Mart ends up making use of OneOps and Tasty Labs, the company could well keep acquiring companies as it strives to enhance its hardware and software arsenal. Wal-Mart might find a new acquisition target at this year’s Structure conference, coming up on June 19-20 in San Francisco, where another batch of companies will compete in the LaunchPad event, including Factor.io, Mertica and SaltStack.

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A new report from the Institute of Medicine shows that, while high levels of sodium intake should be lowered, too little sodium intake could also be harmful.

“These new studies support previous findings that reducing sodium from very high intake levels to moderate levels improves health,” said Brian Strom, a professor of public health and preventive medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “But they also suggest that lowering sodium intake too much may actually increase a person’s risk of some health problems.”

The studies reiterated that there is evidence that high sodium intake is associated with heart disease risk. However, it also found that studies showing that sodium intake below 2,300 mg per day lowers the risk of heart disease and stroke are too “inconsistent” to recommend extremely lowered sodium intake. Lower sodium intake was, in fact, found to be linked to “adverse health effects” for those with mid- to late-stage heart failure.

Researchers stated that the average U.S. adult consumes 3,400 mg (one and one-half teaspoons) or more of sodium per day. Current recommendations on sodium intake suggest that adults ages 14 to 50 lower their sodium intake to 2,300 mg per day, and that adults over 50 and those with hypertension, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease lower their intake to 1,500 mg per day.

Though the report calls current recommendations into question, it does not recommend an intake range for sodium. It also suggests that sodium could affect heart disease in ways other than blood pressure.

“These studies make clear that looking at sodium’s effects on blood pressure is not enough to determine dietary sodium’s ultimate impact on health,” said Strom. “Changes in diet are more complex than simply changing a single mineral. More research is needed to understand these pathways.”

Google announced today that Gladstone, Missouri will be another recipient of Google Fiber. Gladstone’s city council voted to add the ultra-fast broadband service. Of course, Google says that it takes awhile to “plan, engineer, and start building our network in new communities,” so Gladstone residents will have to wait patiently until they can enjoy the brilliant service.

Google also announced recently that Grandview, MO and Shawnee, KS will be receiving Fiber. Shawnee, Grandview, and Gladstone are all located just a few miles from Kansas City, the first city to launch the 1-gigabit-per-second service. Other cities that will eventually receive Fiber include Austin, TX and Provo, UT.

Source: Google Fiber Blog

Come comment on this article: Google announces Gladstone, Missouri will be receiving Google Fiber

The “105-year-old bacon lady” is going to love this. Oscar Mayer revealed over the weekend that it is now making “Bacon Dogs”. These are hot dogs made partially with bacon. To be exact, they’re made with turkey, chicken, pork and bacon, but they’re called bacon dogs, so hopefully they live up to their name.

Given that bacon is possibly the Internet’s favorite food, it seems that this should generate some excitement.

True story. #BaconDogs RT @adage Oscar Mayer Fires Up Bacon Wieners in Battle for Top Dog bit.ly/15UY6WP twitter.com/oscarmayer/sta…

— Oscar Mayer (@oscarmayer) May 10, 2013

Last week, a story about a 105-year-old bacon-loving woman went viral when Oscar Mayer took her for a ride in their Weinermobile. Of course, this was only the latest in a series of old-people-and-meat campaigns from the company.

Firefox 20 was a pretty big release for the Web browser. It added a new download messenger and per-window private browsing, both of which are pretty substantial additions. Firefox 21 isn’t quite as grandiose, but it does add a number of great new features for the Mozilla faithful.

Firefox 21 has two big features – a social API that supports more than Facebook and an improved Do Not Track UI.

The first is rather important as it opens up Firefox to more social networks. Lesser known social networks Cliqz, Mixi (Japan only) and msnNOW can now all be accessed right from a sidebar in Firefox without having to actually visit the site in question. It probably won’t be long now until somebody builds a Twitter sidebar in Firefox with the social API.

The improved Do Not Track controls give users even more control over what they want advertisers to see. The previous Do Not Track dialog in Firefox only had two options – user says nothing and user says don’t track. Those two options are kept in Firefox 21 with a third option explicitly telling advertisers to track their movements across the Web. It’s a small addition, but an important one in the greater context of the Do Not Track debates.

Other additions in Firefox 21 include the Firefox Health Report and suggestions on how to improve startup time. The two kind of go hand-in-hand as Firefox Health Report will suggest ideas on how to improve performance in Firefox which may have a direct influence on application startup time.

As for Firefox for Android, here’s what you will see in the latest version: