Programming Serical LCD from SparkFun w/ Arduino

I working on a project right now and I need this LCD from sparkfun that's controlled by serial. I'm really confused on how to program this and get it working. All I figured out right now is that I need to update the firmware to this other guys because the current one is slow and buggy. But once I do that, does anyone know a good tutorial or know how to program one of these things?

Thanks for help guys!