SQL Server 2005 Native Web Services
Now that's slick - SQL Server 2005 supports web services natively. There's an article on MSDN about it. And they probably got most of it for free thanks to hosting the CLR.
I've written a number of web services (probably most of the ones I've worked on actually) that basically come down to stored procedure calls. Retrieving data, storing data, updating data.
Being able to do this with one less component is a very good idea.
I don't agree with their decision to only support either encrypted or securely authenticated connections. It just means that if I really want an anonymous connection (and there are certainly good reasons to), I have to write my own web service to wrap it, or create an account and give out the credentials as part of my API documentation. The decision of whether or not to require more security should be in the hands of the administrator.