As Javascript has become more powerful over the years, user input fields have evolved to be more innovative and intuitive. One particular example is a time-picker, which has been around in JQuery for a while now. Imagine you are working in a room reservation system and you want your user to pick hours and minutes to reserve a room. JQuery has jQuery.timepickr.js.

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I recently stumbled across Retrographer, a site being developed by students at CMU that provides a mashup of images of historic Pittsburgh against locations on Google Maps along with the recent photos for the same location. The find was a launching point into an intriguing exploration of the history of Summa’s downtown neighborhood and the Ewart Building, Summa’s home.

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I just returned from an Open Spaces conference and was completely jazzed by the power and possibilities of the format: Technologists getting together, discussing what is interesting to us.

A few of the Pittsburgh attendees of the conference decided to organize: Pittsburgh Geek Out Day (PGOD). PGOD is a semi-regular meeting of technologists to discuss software engineering, how to be rockstar programmers, trends in software, and anything else that people find interesting.

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Whether you’re modernizing an existing system or starting a new system from scratch, the task of choosing technologies can be a daunting one.  Do you go with the old stand-by, or is it time to spread your wings with something new?  Do you try for something flashy (but risky), or do you go with a proven approach?

The most familiar technology often becomes the hammer for every nail.  Before you head down that path, take the time to make sure it really makes sense.  There are many questions that need to be answered.  In this post I’d like to focus on two questions:

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