ECN and STP are two types of brokers, allowing traders with numerous types of trading facilities. But I will suggest you to go for ECN brokers while selecting.
Using technical tools will only help traders catch the technical flow of the market. So, I would suggest traders to focus on fundamental analysis too besides technical one.
Your basic researches are perfect so now you should practice trading on demo account. The more you trade on demo, the more you will earn practical knowledge.
More and more people are engaging themselves with forex observing its importance to our economy and brokers are serving traders with wide variety of trading facilities.
In forex, the bid price is what the dealer is willing to pay for a currency while the ask price is the rate at which a dealer will sell the same currency.