I think the most general advice on learning any language, besides everything else is that you should try to express yourself in that other language using the paradigms of that language, i.e. instead of focusing on "how should I translate this phrase from my native language X to language Y" focus on "how would they express this _thought_ in language Y". For example, just rephrasing a thought (sentence, message) can make it a lot easier to translate.

Общайтесь с носителями и все получится... )))))))))))

This is a very basic but still quite helpful basic grammar introduction to Russian.  I found it to be immediately useful and a quick aid to help me review grammar that I had previously not remembered so well.  Please do continue to build this up.  You have a very limpid style that lends itself to learning faster than from staid hardcopy text books.

get a software

It's very personal, but I think learning the alphabet and then some of the grammar rules helps a lot on memorizing words in the future - you will now kinda more accurately what's the correct pronounciation.
If you speak german you'll probably have less problems with the dative/prepositional case...
And if you speak a language related to latin, you might have more trouble if you try to learn by simply "translating" while you make sentence constructions.

Privet, I find that podcasts and talking with Russians on skype very helpful. Just have them type a word and tell you its pronunciation.