Beginner’s (that’s me!) Information:

ASIC
Application Specific Integrated Circuit

FPGA
Introductory information for Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA)
http://www.fpga4fun.com/FPGAinfo1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array
http://www.fpgacentral.com/
http://www.openfpga.org/

Programmable digigal logic chips.
Are “volatile”, program has to be reloaded when the unit is turned on.

Article/Blog about working with FPGA development kits
http://svenand.blogdrive.com/archive/11.html

CPLD
Complex Programmable Logic Device (technology of the 1980’s
More complex than a PAL, less than an FPGA
Non-volatile mmemory
Useful for providing “boot loader” funcitionality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPLD

Microsoft Windows Embedded Developer Center
Articles and resources from the MSDN library regarding Windows embedded.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/embedded/default.aspx

Embedded Technology Journal
http://www.embeddedtechjournal.com/

Nuts and Volts Magazine
http://www.nutsvolts.com/

Circuit Cellar
http://www.circuitcellar.com/