It's a tablet/phone app that charges zero commissions on stock trades. If you are new to investing, I think this is a really good way to ease into it, because you can start off with very small purchases to get comfortable without getting killed on commissions. You won't get any robust data or charts from Robinhood, so you'll have to do research elsewhere, and the stock price quotes aren't always up-to-the-second accurate, but as far as purchasing/selling stocks, it's a very convenient and easy way to do it. I would start small this way so that you can decide if you are comfortable seeing your account value fluctuate by the second. I would also highly recommend you write a set of goals (investing objectives) for what you want to achieve and some rules for how you'll operate given certain market conditions. Then stick to your goal and rules. If you have a very long-term investing timeline, then you just need to get comfortable seeing your account in the red for some periods and just stick to your plan.

For research/charts, I've found TD Ameritrade has very useful tools. You have to set up an account and fund it before you get access to the really good stuff, but I think you can fund it with very little money. That's what I did just to access their data.

Good luck. I'm still a novice when it comes to stock investing, but these are some of the things I've learned in the time I've been doing it.