Module development and code questions

I'm currently developing a front page module which will display the latest story and forum post. However I have no experience retreiving nodes, let alone the latest ones. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-LankZ-

I'm building a family history site, and am investigating how to do a customization that would empower current authenticated users to grant authentication to new registrants. For instance, LiveJournal implements a version of this concept by alloting special registration "codes" to its users, which those users can dole out to friends. If someone registers without a referral code, they get the minimal level of access/features; whereas if they use a valid referral code at registration, they're immediately trusted with more access/features.

I have a knack for ideas, I was just looking at my Drupal page I finally just got all situated all nice and tidy, and started thinking "is there a module that will scan all current nodes and make links from words found in nodes to the node with the text in the title?". I found the glossary module, which allows me to manually add this and that, but I don't think there's an automatic one, if anyone knows if it's possible, I could most likely make it, that is if it were to be used, just a thought.

todo.module (adapted by univie)
This module is identical in structure and functionality with project.module (v 1.86 2003/06/25). I called it "todo" like a todo-list.
So the README-file of project.module refers also to todo.module.
I replaced some variables by new names and changed also the names of the tables.
Instead of "bug", "feature" and "task" as project type I use "task1", "task2" and "task3".
One can easily change the terms using the localization funtionality (translation) for more confortable and appropriate terms..

I initially got sold on PHP when I found PHP-Nuke v4.4. Then I found that upgrading caused headaches with the customizations I had done so I looked at writing modules for PostNuke. I know that I am only am amateur coder but creating a module should not be that painful. Thankfully, just in time, I found drupal. With the documentation the drupal folks provided I was able to create a semi-simple module in a day.

Now I am limping forward with converting my old PHP-Nuke v4.4 site customizations to drupal modules.

I have a costomized node, say, company, including company name, address, phone, email, website, as well as a description.

What hook should I implement if I want some more details other than the default teaser to be shown on the regular listing page, say

/node

or

/taxonomy/view/or/1

of course assuming it's in term 1.

Thanks.