"All men by nature desire knowledge."

-Aristotle-

Some Useful Links for the Beginning Investor

Charting
Bigcharts - The best charting site on the internet. It offers charts in almost any configuration you can imagine.
Clearstation - Another good charting site. Clearstation offers members' favorite stocks. Be careful here. The herd is usually wrong.
Stockcharts - This one has a good explanation of technical analysis.

Discussion Boards
Raging Bull - Don't ever buy a stock just because it is touted on a discussion board, but they are entertaining. Raging Bull is one of the better ones.
Silicon Investor - A good board that is in touch with the latest technology. A lot of techies hang out here.
Yahoo - A good general board plus it has a lot of financial information on companies. Sometimes this info is not up-to-date.

Stock Exchanges
American Stock Exchange - Commonly known as the AMEX. If you afraid of individual stocks, check out the HOLDRS (a basket of stocks in a sector that trade like an individual stock).
Nasdaq - Worth perusing. This is the tech laden exchange.
New York Stock Exchange - The largest stock market in the world. Check out the virtual tours.

Magazines
Forbes, Money, and BusinessWeek are all good. I like to read about the general consensus and then do the opposite.

News
Yahoo, Reuters, Bloomberg, and CNBC all have good financial news. For technology-specific news, try technewsnow.

On-line Brokers
There are many to choose from. I suggest you call them and compare their commission schedules. Cybertrader, based in Austin, Texas, has great customer service.
Try Ameritrade, Etrade, TDWaterhouse, Brown & Co., and Scottrade also.