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First time investor and online brokerage accounts
Littleadv has given you excellent general advice, but to my mind, the most important part of it all and the path which I will strongly recommend you follow, is the suggestion to look into a mutual fund. I would add even more strongly,  go to a mutual fund company directly    and make an investment with them directly instead of making the    investment through a brokerage account.  Pick an index fund with low expenses, e.g. there are S&P 500 index funds available with  expenses that are a fraction of 1%. (However, many also require minimum investments on the order of $2500 or $3000 except for IRA accounts).  At this time, your goal should be to reduce expenses as much as possible because expenses, whether they be in brokerage fees which may be directly visible to you or mutual fund expenses which are invisible to you, are what will eat away at your return far more than the difference between the returns of various investments.