Good piece by David Bogoslaw at Bloomberg Businessweek on all the new technology/trading development going on in the online brokerage space. It's a
well-researched piece and does a great job of going through each online brokerage (including the smaller startups) and outline what they've been working on.
Some of the interesting functionality profiled in the article includes:

- shareable, backtestable stock screeners (TradeKing)
- expanded 3rd party research (RiskMetrics available at Fidelity, Seeking Alpha at E*Trade, Ned Davis at Schwab)
- Exceptional volume scanners (LiveAction at tradeMONSTER polls for unusual activity in the options market)
- more complicated buy/sell triggers (a few brokers)
- social media integration (most of them)
With individual investors still spooked by the market meltdown of 2008-09 and by the sudden plunge in major indexes on May 6, the advanced tools that online brokers are providing could be a carrot that draws more people back to stocks—and gets them back in the habit of trading online.