With my Canon S45 I just got a 1 GB compact flash card and took lots of pictures until I thought I understood how it worked. It's still hit and miss though (especially when I try to take pictures of items close to the camera and have to use the manual focus).
[link|http://www.dcviews.com/tutors.htm|This] site lists lots of tutorials of various kinds. I haven't gone through them myself.
A book on general photography that I have and like is the National Geographic Photography Field Guide (ISBN-0-7922-7498-9) by Peter K. Burian and Robert Caputo. It mainly covers general photography, though there is about 20 pages on digital manipulation and digital photography. It, and other resources, are mentioned [link|http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=10129|here].
Luck!
Cheers,
Scott.