Microsoft has released a new white paper, called An Introduction to the Web Services Architecture and Its Specifications. The white paper weighs in at 45 printed pages and has no pretty pictures :( You can read it here.
Normally I wouldn't mention such a white paper, but last night I started reading Expert Service-Oriented Architecture in C# using the Web Services Ehancements 2.0 and it has me pumped up a bit on web services, which quite frankly I haven't played with in quite some time. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback on my chapter by chapter review (summation) of Expert C# Business Objects that I will provide a chapter by chapter review of Expert Service-Oriented Architecture in C# as well in the near future.