Quick, drink this! There isn't much time.

It’s beautiful outside! Stop staring at the computer and go for a hike.  When you’re done here, of course.

San Francisco is providing us with two summits designed to offer guidance and tips for those folks with the weight of an entire company on their shoulders.  If this describes you, the Chief Strategy Officer Summit and CFO Innovation Summit are both 2-day events that will, at the very least, give you a damn good excuse to get out of the office.

Bloomingdale, IL is home to the Midwest Yoga Conference, which sounds to me like a festival of health and wellness built around the concepts of yoga.

The Seattle International Film Festival enters its 38th year and will provide several weeks of movies and events.  This is a big deal up there, culturally speaking, and has gained recognition across the nation as a hub for interesting and innovative films.

And let’s not forget about the Cloud.  The United Kingdom will relish it today, offering an educational event entitled the Cloud Circle Forum.

Innotech may sound to you like the name of a fake corporation in a James Bond or Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, but that just makes you ridiculous.  The Innotech Conference in Dallas targets regional business & technology innovation, and certainly does not operate as a front for supervillains to create weapons large enough to destroy the world.

Even as we sleep, new technologies are invented and the human race pushes forward… and outward.  Here to give you a quick update on the status of asteroid mining (check your archives of Hound-Ups if you need catching up) is a Gizmodo article showing this crazy new claw-thingy that grabs them and holds on for dear life.

I knew there was a reason I felt the need to consume 4-6 cups of coffee per day.  It’s keeping me alive!

Sweet delicious technology.

Welcome to the middle of the week, where most of the awesome stuff happens.  Oh wait, I was thinking of the weekend.  Nevermind.  Anyway, there’s at least a few cool things kicking off with us this Wednesday, not the least of which is one of the biggest and most widely respected film festivals in the world.

The Cannes Film Festival in France dates back to 1946.  Over the years it has become a symbol of artistic quality and a mecca for celebrity back-patting.  The buzz and influence of Cannes seems to grow each year as they continuously attempt to cram in more A-Listers and blockbusters.  It will run clear through next week, concluding with an awards show and LOTS of standing ovations.

MediaPost is offering up the OMMA Social event today in NYC.  This one, as the most savvy readers have already guessed, is designed to provide brands and marketers with insight into how social media is best used to build their voice and hopefully, profits.

The two-day TechFuse Conference in Minneapolis throws all kinds of computing terms together into a blender and whips up a nice digital smoothie.  They’ll be discussing cloud computing, development, SQL, SharePoint, Security, how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop and much, much more.

The SmartStart Venture Forum is a friend to the entrepreneur, providing opportunities for venture capitalists to meet their newest investment each and every year.  Hundreds of companies have attributed more than $72 million in funding to their participation in this event.  That’s a lot of scratch.

WebVisions Portland dedicates itself to being the “creative conference for the web.”  With a zesty spirit of innovation friendly to designers and entrepreneurs and a neat logo featuring a boxing robot, they certainly seem to have the attitude that an open-minded funnel for new ideas should.

In dork news, the gaming world lit up yesterday with the release of Diablo III.  Apparently this has been a widely-anticipated release.  Tech sites and social media streams are buzzing with it.  Many gamers will not see the light of day for weeks.  But that’s probably not that unusual.

Rumor has it (rumor being scientific study) that man and dog have been best friends for many eons, and that our friendship may have been a key factor in the evolution of the human race.  That’s cool, but I’m still a cat person.

Yeah he's scary, but at least he doesn't know my search history and all of my passwords.

New York City is hopping and buzzing this week, but I guess that’s usually the case.  And if you work for Google, you already knew that, because you guys know everything about everyone.

There’s plenty going on in New York City today.  They’re celebrating Internet Week to honor the thriving community of internetters that inhabit the city.  There’s tons of stuff going on all over the city for the next seven days, amounting to more than 200 events for websters to sink their teeth into.

OMMA Mobile NYC gives content producers, brand marketers and agency professionals a look at the latest trends and technologies in mobile marketing today in the Big Apple via keynotes, research presentations and of course, case studies.

The Content Delivery Summit is taking hold and kicking off its fourth annual conference nearby, bringing together content providers, telecom carriers and industry vendors for a detailed look into the accelerating world of content delivery.

While we’re on content, let’s scoot over to Minneapolis.  Confab 2012 reinforces the driving trends towards the value of content and discusses the new strategic measures necessary to embrace it.  The event is only a year old, but has a nice hold on an important sector of the industry already.

Some tech junkies and Silicon Valley professionals and cool people forget that the iPhone has a couple of competitors.  I hop on BART here in the Bay Area or take a walk around downtown and all I see is iPhones.  I think there’s more of them here than people.  Maybe today that won’t be the case, as AnDevCon heads to the Bay.  This conference for Android Developers brings developers and designers together in a collaborative environment to embrace the Droid.

For those of you with three and a half minutes to kill, you might celebrate SNL’s 100th digital short with them.  By watching the video, I mean, not by, um, doing what they’re doing.

Do you trust Google?  The internet giant has invaded and dominated a good chunk of the online and physical world, reaching the level of unstoppable juggernaut.  Is it possible they’re turning the massive power they hold towards evil, becoming some sort of corporate super villain?  Some argue they already have.

With many actors embracing the method style these days in an effort to strive for realism, I’m surprised more of them aren’t developing drug addictions along with eating disorders and insomnia.  This Wired article explains why, in a very brief nutshell.

You've got the go-ahead; Make us proud.

Some big news coming to you via the Hound-Up today.  For starters; we’re not all going to die imminently.  Eventually, yeah… sorry.  But in the meantime, you can enjoy some fun and fuzzy events and maybe even pick up some new toys to help you extract every little ounce of joy out of your weekend.

This weekend in Vienna, European businesses will have the opportunity to learn about the latest in green technology at greenEXPO EUROPE, which covers the bases of sustainability in business.

If you’re in the mood for something a little more fluffy and adorable, you do have the option of jetting over to the UK for the London Pet Show.  There’s a wide range of exciting animals to check out which dip into the exotic and aquatic while of course offering the mandatory kittens and pups.

For your Sunday, you lucky Englanders also have the option of shooting out to Warwickshire for the Rugby Vintage Toy Fair and picking up some nostalgic collectibles from your favorite vendors.

The Asbury Park Comic Con takes hold of a bowling alley/bar right on the historic Jersey boardwalk that spawned Bruce Springsteen’s career in the 1970′s.  The Comic Con is starting as a modest event, but hopes to gain steam as things move forward.

Speaking of comics, the Summit City Comic Con ignites in Indiana tomorrow.  This one boasts a strong local & community involvement while also celebrating the legacy of all that is dorky.

New Yorkers interested in the art of cover-up have a chance to discover the latest techniques and products at the Makeup Show on Sunday, which features workshops and hands-on seminars alongside the top suppliers.

As we approach the 2012 Doomsday foretold by the Mayans, archaeologists are hard at work discovering stuff that completely disproves the ridiculous theory that that was ever actually the case.  Just in time to put our fears to rest, they have discovered a room which was used by the ancient civilization to make their astronomical calculations.  The discovery implies we have plenty of time left on this planet to continue to destroy it, create strange art based on pop culture memes, and perfect our recipe for peppermint brownies.

The Beatles were wrong: money can buy me love.  Facebook is testing a new feature to build some monetization into the site which allows you to pay money to prioritize your posts.  In case you’re wondering if it’s worth it; yes, I am really dying to see a picture of what you made for dinner.

We’ll see you on Monday!

When I was a kid, we had to wait FIVE minutes for beastly machines like these to connect to something called AOL.

Could someone please direct me to the weekend?  I seem to have gotten lost at Thursday.

The Small Business Expo in New York touts itself as a pivotal event for all you CEO types, offering priceless networking opportunities alongside a unique tradeshow floor.

I haven’t the foggiest what The NBM Show‘s titular acronym stands for, but I can tell you that the event is a business tradeshow that presents the latest in digital printing, signage, apparel decoration, personalization, promotional products and the like.  I wonder if the bedazzler lady has a booth here.

SANS Security West helps you folks that are sans-security become secure in your security; this event offers education and training for those who need a little help in the invisible world of cyber protection.

The EASDP Forum is a place for publishers to connect, engage and discuss technologies, problems and solutions facing their industry today.  It’s taking place in Brussels and hosted by the European Association of Direct Publishers.

The amount of innovative new things reaching our braingrapes via the internet these days is too boggling to comprehend.  Spend five minutes not looking at Twitter and you are already behind the ball.  Spend a day in seclusion and you may never catch up to the world again.  I’m just hearing about these scientists that have been able to create a synthetic leaf which may be able to generate electricity in the form of hydrogen.  And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!  Consider 3D printing, Brain-Computer-Interfaces, and 3D printed bikinis!  If you’re ready, take a gander at Google’s next mind-blowing project, which involves using a billion dollar ghost town in New Mexico to develop the fully automated lifestyle of the future.  Are you frightened or excited?  I’m not sure either but I think I just peed a little.

It’s comforting to hear that there are other geeks out there – enough even to make it possible for business like these to be profitable.  I wouldn’t mind trying my hand at a zombie mall or seeing how I pass as a spy…

If we drink enough beer, we can end global warming forever. Or speed it up. Or just forget about it.

We live in exciting times.  If you don’t believe me, just take a look at all the neat stuff packed into this post and try to keep yourself from getting all giddy.

With folks like Richard Branson and the gang behind Planetary Resources, Inc. planning and executing commercially driven adventures into Earth’s orbit, outer space is no longer just a place for our planet’s governments to fight over.  It’s an infinite supply of resources, real estate and mystery.  Hence the inaugural Spacecraft Technology Expo, which brings all of the exciting new designs and engineering of spaceship technology under one roof in Los Angeles for the next few days.  Hopefully this summit will inspire some courageous investors to reach for the stars.

Over in Germany, the Stuttgart Animated Film Festival begins its 19th incarnation, showing the newest, coolest and most innovative animations the world has to offer.

There’ll be plenty of free samples in Chicago today at the Sweets & Snack Expo, which features a wide range of delicious treats from thousands of suppliers.  Beware of any jerk who smashes together pop rocks and soda in an effort to escape with the gummy Venus de Milo.

NEXT Berlin is the leading digital technology conference in Europe, putting forth an approachable atmosphere to all industry professionals who could benefit from some enhanced digital knowledge; i.e., even the least geeky of professionals is welcome to savor the spoils of the event.

Down in New Orleans they’ve designed an event that covers every conceivable topic related to the Future of Tablets.  These slick, slim devices may well be the future for us, so you might as well jump on the bandwagon and learn how to take advantage.

Take a moment to consider this:  nobody in the world has ever actually seen a living dinosaur.  And yet, we’ve been able to reconstruct the skeletons of a vast variety of different extinct species, and apparently we know them well enough to know what they ate and how much it made them fart.  Some new mathematical model suggests that dinos in the Mesozoic era did so much pooting that it actually warmed up the planet.

Ever wonder how the beer industry relates to the overall economy of America?  Well it’s pretty concisely described in this Salon article.  In trends that can be seen across several industries (organic foods, Apple computers, hybrid vehicles), Americans are starting to opt for quality over quantity, giving a larger chunk of their money to well-designed microbrews and opting away from piss-poor, mass-produced macrobrews.  The author makes a great point: if we’re going to choose quantity over quality, we’ll eventually be getting everything, including our beer, from China.

Your brain on drugs.

Congratulations for surviving Cinco de Mayo.  It’s now Seis de Mayo, which isn’t anything special… except for all the awesome events kicking off today!

Cytrix Synergy San Francisco runs through the whole week to provide everything you ever needed to know about cloud computing, virtualization and networking.  This is an in-depth, multimedia event covering everything from mobile to television with over 100 business sessions and targeted tracks.

The Millenial Mega Mashup may or may not pit human wrestlers against robot opponents in a battle of technology and will.  Okay, it doesn’t.  It’s really a focused event helping create innovative strategies to target the 8-30 year-old demographic.

For those of you obsessed with polished chrome and shiny rims, you can find the absolute best in car cleaning technology at the Car Care World Expo, a show dedicated to the washing of cars.

A triple threat of fashionable events are taking hold of New York City this week, each running concurrently and complementing each other.  Moda Manhattan is an upscale trade event boasting more than 30 product categories from elegant to sporty.  FAME is a premiere fashion venue for the junior to young contemporary market.  Finally, AccessoriesTheShow displays a wide range of knick knacks to complement the styles you acquire at Moda and FAME.

SIMposium USA is making an effort at tackling the burgeoning and complicated issue of security in the world of mobile devices by compiling a wide range of expertise to hammer out some solutions.

For those of you ready and willing to embrace any new meme (or laugh really, really hard), get ready for “actual cannibal Shia Lebeouf.”  ‘Nuff said.

After that, I think we need something with a wee bit more substance.  It turns out Scientists have created something that actually traveled faster than the speed of light, a feat which has been assumed to be impossible since Einstein described light speed as the speed limit of the universe.  It’s not the breakthrough of the century (more like a gimmick) but takes us one step closer to dismantling everything we know about the universe and leading us to the inevitable realization that we actually have no clue what the hell is going on around us.

The Avengers was the sensation of the weekend all over the world, smashing opening weekend records by raking in $200 million here in the US and a total of $642 million worldwide.  That’s the GDP of a small country.  Probably.  Apparently, people still like superhero movies.  Alot.

I have assembled this Gummy Bear Army to do my bidding. Some of them are sleeping right now, though.

I’ve got plenty for you to do this weekend, if you aren’t too busy watching The Avengers over and over.  It’s fine if you are, just remember: this is time you will never get back.  If watching this film happens to produce the same chill one experiences when a ghost passes through them, you can make up for it by hitting up one of the awesome and inspirational events we’ve listed here and on our main page.

SOBCon Chicago may sound like a pretty depressing event, but its purpose is quite the opposite.  In attempting to be the “Cirque de Soleil of business strategy events,” they are providing an interactive think-tank dedicated to pushing ideas into action in an exciting, collaborative environment “where virtual meets concrete.”

Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ, where the TromaDance Film Festival ignites a celebration of independent creative inspiration.  This festival is designed to be accessible and encouraging for all budding filmmakers by not charging a penny to submit or attend screenings.  They must be doing something right, because this year marks their 13th annual gathering.

Yet another chance to master the cloud comes into play in Cincinnati with the Cloud Intelligence Conference.  The cloud is drifting it’s way into all walks of life and business these days, so don’t wait any longer than you have to to get on board.

Washington D.C. is hosting an informative weekend for food writers & bloggers which is cleverly named Eat, Write, Retreat.  Bloggers will have plenty of access to hands-on, specially designed dining experiences and great opportunities to strengthen the community of foodies.

Whisky Live finds its way to Tokyo this weekend to offer a delicious and deep assortment of oaky smokey alcohol.

Green Festival Chicago continues reigning as one of the year’s most important sustainability events, and does so with plenty of inspiring keynote presentations spaced out over the weekend.

The newest comic book movie The Avengers is taking the box office by storm, clobbering any and all competition with substantial numbers.  It’s opening today and it’s already an undoubted success; before anyone even knows if it’s any good.  I guess hype defeats quality these days, but maybe I’m just a pessimist.  For a perfect convergence of hype and quality, take a trip over to The Dark Knight Rises and see the new trailer they released this week.  It will knock your pants off.

The concept of immortality has taunted us for thousands of years, but some smarty pants folks over in Silicon Valley claim to be relatively close to finding a stop-gap solution.  The creation of a digital, silicon entity that continues living after your physical body dies is, as they claim, becoming closer to science fact than science fiction (aside from a few ridiculously huge hurdles).  In some dark room somewhere, a highly paid screenwriter is clacking away at some horror-thriller-Vin-Diesel-vehicle that butchers this concept down to another extravaganza of 3-D robots who want to kill us all for some reason.  Fortunately they’ll probably write in a band of comic book superheroes to stop them.

Yeah - now imagine me with a BIGASS FUTURE-GUN.

I don’t want to alarm you, but it’s entirely possible that our technology is falling into the hands of evil, sea-dwelling monsters.  I realize we’ve probably killed off like 90% of the sharks in the world, but they’re still pretty creepy.

Hey everybody! It’s time for Pool Expo 2012!  If you need the latest news and gadgetry in the pool industry, hop a quick flight over to Istanbul and get in on all the slippery fun.  This exciting event lasts only four days! They guarantee no sea monsters will be in attendance.

The Startup Conference starts up and finishes off today in Mountain View, gathering thousands of our most intelligent and eager entrepreneurs into a single auditorium for the day.  I hope Lex Luthor doesn’t know about this.

MEET is all acronyming the hell out of Mechanical Electronic Electrical Technology.  Is that redundant?  Anyway, lucky attendees up in Canada will get to view the latest innovations in electronics and electricals!  A great place to source spare parts for your latest weapon of doom!

Hoteliers are beginning to gather in Atlanta for the AAHOA Annual Convention and Trade Show.  Particularly Asian Hoteliers, as this event is held by the Asian American Hotel Owners Association.  But, you knew that.  This is a pretty big convention for the trade show industry which offers some neat bonuses, like Indian Cuisine and Bollywood performances.

The hopes and dreams of supervillains across the globe are starting to become realized.  Not only is global warming making serious progress towards wiping out every land-dwelling creature on earth, there’s also some crazy dudes out there who have successfully attached LASERS to a SHARK.

Meanwhile, Cracked has compiled a gallery of technologies that should definitely exist, but which our geeks and scientists have been too lazy to develop (as far as we know), like fart-cloaking underwear and killer bears trained for military use.

Someday we will begin to actually comprehend the possibilities of quantum technology, but I’m beginning to doubt that it will be anytime soon.  This shit just keeps getting more and more weird and complex.  For example, these quantum entanglements can now be manipulated and basically defy the laws of physics.  I just hope we figure this stuff out before the sharks do.

The Moon is preparing to devour its next victims.

Today we’ll explore a bit of business and marketing combined with some gamification and a touch of the superlunal.  Since I put that on the internet, it’s now a word.   This will all be explained by the end of the Hound-Up, I swear.

SCI-FI LONDON is a major genre event for the United Kingdom, boasting advanced screenings of major cult hits and proclaiming an aura that demands the title be written in all caps.  With no corporate sponsors, this event relies on filmmakers, fans and the general public to maintain its success – so go on out and watch yourself an indie sci-fi flick this week!

I’ve only recently been introduced to the concept of “gamification” and it’s a simple but interesting idea.  Basically, it says that anything can be “gamified,” or, turned into a game.  Companies have used social gaming as an effective way to market to consumers with engagement and value and the trend goes much deeper and farther than that.  Vator Spark in Berkeley is an event designed to show startups how to gamify their company, and reap all of the benefits of the public’s addiction to games.

Two events in Sydney allow the entrepreneur to stay up-to-date in the world of marketing.  The eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit is a global event helping businesses leverage data and strategy while the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) brings together the sharpest minds in search marketing to give attendees the most effective updates and advice.

The Food Marketing Institute holds the biggest trade event of the year for the supermarket industry for the next couple of days – aptly named FMI’s Supermarket Industry Convention & Expo.

Finally ,the Wired Business Conference is today in NYC, gathering major thought-leaders to discuss the topic of “disruption” with Wired’s editors, hoping to give attendees an insight into the best way to embrace a shifting business environment.

One thing I like about Jezebel.com is that it has an entire section (amidst Fasion, Gaming, Dating, etc.) dedicated to Mad Men.  It’s also a generally funny website akin to Gizmodo and Geekosystem, but the hook is that it’s for/by women.  Meanwhile, it popped up on my Twitter feed the other day that IndieWire has released a list of the 20 most anticipated Summer movies, and an impressive 9 of them have female directors.  That’s impressive only because it’s extremely unusual in an industry dedicated to the legacy of the sausage fest (the number one movie at the box office for the past two weeks has the title Think Like A Man…).  Yahoo! gave a shout out to some unsung women explorers today as well, which may be some kind of mildly fateful coincidence.  Anyway, here’s hoping we’re starting to bridge a gap towards actually embracing a gender equality that is probably only perceived as such by us fellas currently.

By the way, if you keep your eyes tuned to the sky this weekend, you will undoubtedly be witness to the phenomenon known as Supermoon.  Not quite as cool as it sounds, but still kinda neat…