Best way to highlight an object?

Hello there! I’m developing a Java based OpenGL app (using JOGL) for my university. It is a Association Rules (graphs) viewer… So I have to deal mainly with nodes (rendered as spheres) and edges linking two nodes together (rendered as cylinders with cone pointers)…

When the user selects a node or an edge I would like to highlight the selected object so that it would be easily recognizable (in a average graph there can be hundreds of nodes). I have already implemented a ray-casting engine for collision detection.

My problem is that I don’t know (It’s my first OpenGL project) what could be the best way to highlight an object.

Right now I have implemented an old-fashioned Quake 1 glow effect. (Remember the Rocket glow explosion that was rendered as an expanding yellowish transparent hemisphere?)… When the user clicks on a sphere I currently render a semi-transparent pulsating sphere that gets bigger and smaller… But this is so 20th century

Is there a better and easier way? The project should run on average PCs so I won’t be able to use advanced features…

Any ideas?

Just change its color to something different, it won’t get any easier or cleaner than that IMO