NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

OMG - Object Modeling Group
The Object Modeling Group.  Everything UML.  This is ground-zero for UML specifications, practices, and white-papers.

IEEE CS - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is the world's leading professional association for the advancement of technology.  

IFPUG - International Function Point Users Group
The International Function Point Uses Group is a group dedicated to perfecting the art of predicting software completion estimates by deriving function points from requirements specs.

INDUSTRY TRENDS

TIOBE Software Development Language Popularity 
The TIOBE Programming Community index gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, Yahoo!, and YouTube are used to calculate the ratings.

SOFTWARE SECURITY STANDARDS

SANS Institute list of top 25 most dangerous (security) programming errors. (updated 01/12/2009)
SANS maintains a series of assessments of secure coding skills in three languages along with certification exams that allow programmers to determine gaps in their knowledge of secure coding and allows buyers to ensure outsourced programmers have sufficient programming skills. Organizations with more than 500 programmers can assess the secure coding skills of up to 100 programmers at no cost.