<p>Anyone have experience with algorithmic trading (like stocks)?  Any good services to use to get quotes and to make trades?</p>

I had a freelance project that used
Interactive Brokers
, which provided both a proprietary API as well as a FIX-based one. The proprietary API is somewhat painful to use (and they probably can't change it much, for compatibility), but you can easily code a "translation layer" to make it much more pleasant. I haven't tried the FIX-based API, so no comments there.
And yes, I reopened the question. I happen to think it's a fair question to ask.