There is apparently a large debate of philosophies raging: SOAP vs REST. None of it makes much sense to me.
SOAP and REST are transports, i.e. they're ways to encode bits of information and transmit them over lower-layer network protocols. There shouldn't be a debate here, just as there shouldn't be a debate over whether to use TCP/IP or IPX. You use whatever one fits best with your overall architecture, or the one that offers the particular features you need at the moment.
Ideally, whatever toolkit you use (I use WCF, because we're a MS shop here) should abstract all the transport stuff away, so that you don't need to know or care what you're using. WCF does this. Lots of other toolkits don't, and therefore, there's a large debate.