I am aware of the Amazon.com exposed URIs ... which I need to sign up for and then on I can utilize them ....... roll-up my sleeves ..... and get some WCF Client test-drive coding.
What are the other such publicly exposed end points that reflect real or almost real-time services?
Any offerings specifically from Microsoft?
I am basically looking for writing WCF clients for both WCF and non-WCF services...RESTful ones and even otherwise.
For one, you can check out the "Visit MIX" API - an OData service (WCF Data Service):
http://api.visitmix.com/OData.svc/
Go to http://www.odata.org - there's a whole bunch of other API's published there.
Should get you started! Otherwise - just build your own! Create your own test server (that'll be a good learning experience, too!) and then connect to it.
For SOAP / classic web services go check out http://www.xmethods.net - it has a repository of a bunch of publicly available web services - everything from weather, to currency converters, to whatever you can dream up. Those give you samples for SOAP based WCF service clients.