Architecture choices

Tech         Version   Install via        Use/Why?
-----------+---------+------------------+-----------------------------
Ubuntu       11.10     AMI                In April will upgrade to 12.04 LTS for support through 2017
PostgreSQL   9.1       apt                Storage of application data (users, etc.)
Solr         3.4       wget               Storage of newsroom data (the big stuff)
nginx        1.0.5     apt                Webserver
uWSGI        0.9.9.2   pip                Python WSGI server
Python       2.7       ubuntu default     Not all dependencies have Py3k support, so 2.7
Django       1.4       pip                Will likely upgrade to 1.4 down the road
OpenJDK      6         apt
jetty        ?         w/ Solr
fabric       1.2.2     pip
psycopg2     2.4.1     pip
tastypie     HEAD      pip+git
csvkit       HEAD      pip+git
celery       2.5.1     pip
requests     0.8.3     pip
south        0.7.4     pip                

Various other minor requirements are documented in the requirements.txt file.