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The book Alif Baa is a great place to start learning the alphabet and some simple words/phrases. This was the first book I used last year. If you buy it, you also want to make sure you get the answer key to make sure you are doing things correctly.

Alif Baa is the beginning of a series of books that is widely used to teach non-natives Arabic. I know that the American University at Cairo currently uses this series of books, as do many prominent institutions teaching Arabic. We used a book called Standard Arabic for our second semester, but I would not suggest it for learning on your own. It is very good, but very difficult to grasp if you are working alone.

The follow-up to Alif Baa is Al-kitaab fii Ta'allum Al-'Arabiyya which is the book we are using now in conjunction with some materials our teacher randomly finds.

I have also used the Rosetta Stone computer program, it is quite useful for those of us who love sitting at the computer but a bit pricey for someone who is testing the waters.

I will likely be adding a bunch of links to Arabic learning sources on TM 21 in conjunction with the Arabic Image Link section I am creating. If you missed this before, check Fun With Arabic out, it is a very good online intro.