Seeking Alpha is a site which has all the conference calls held by US companies discussing their earnings. And all for free.

Steve Rubel ruminates on what he calls the Transient Web. It is quite striking how quickly products and services rise to prominence and then fade away to be replaced by other blockbusters. Some of the examples he gives: Encarta to Wikipedia and Friendster to MySpace.

Rod Boothby shares his views on the next wave of business productivity – what he calls the “Web Office”. It’s worth a read.

Steve Rubel reports on a Portable Reputation Management System called RentAThing which aims to do for real life what eBay has done for online auctions. His post includes a link to a novel presentation illustrating the idea which was done with Playmobil figures and Flickr.

Skypecasts, which are in early preview, allow anyone to set up a conference call over Skype – one way, or two way, for up to 100 people, then record and store the event on eBay’s servers. This sounds like this could be really sticky in technology-savvy markets.

For a company that didn’t get RSS at all until quite recently, Microsoft has done a really impressive job with its Web Feeds Home.

Rather stodgy, late middle-aged Democratic candidate for the Governorship of California Phil Angelides has taken up residence on MySpace – a real sign of the times.

Steve Rubel notes that YouTube has now included the option to upload video from phones via MMS. He expects to see the service come into its own the next time there is a major news event; YouTube will be first with the news.

The WSJ asked its readers what the future held for online news sites such as itself. This is an article describing some of the feedback.

According to Search Engine Watch Microsoft’s acquisition of Vexel has accelerated its progress in the competition with Google and Yahoo! over maps. The company specialises in real-time, location-specific information and MS could, for example, offer waiting times in popular restaurants or petrol prices.