Here is an article (first of a series) that provides an Introduction to IL. [Sam Gentile's Weblog]

Good stuff! Actually though, parts one and two are available. I found the link to the second at the bottom of the first. No mention is made of when the next installment is to be expected, but I'll certainly be keeping my eyes peeled.

A brief article was just added to the .NET center of The O'Reilly Network which covers the basics of the System.Net.Sockets namespace. Defines what a socket is, explains the basics of DNS and finally touches on how data is sent and received. Not a bad article if you're new to socket programming or just new to .NET and want to get familiar with its implementation.

Was just scanning the .NET developer center over on MSDN and noticed that the .NET Petshop reference application has been upgraded to version 2.0. Here's a quick snip about it:

The .NET Pet Shop 2.0 application is functionally equivalent to the Sun® Microsystems Java™ Pet Store 1.2 blueprint application, and can be used to compare the coding concepts, basic application server features, and architectures of .NET and J2EE™.

Essential .NET Security. Keith Brown has *finally* decided to write Essential .NET Security and he'll be posting it to HTML as he writes it. He's already got the ASP.NET security chapter posted. Wahoo! [sellsbrothers.com: Windows Developer News]

Awesome! Keith is well known for his security knowledge of Win32 and COM(+). Seeing as how security permeates almost every aspect of .NET, this is definitely going to be a must have for any serious .NET developer.