Adage Blog

Patrons of Chicago’s award-winning regional theatre can utilize enhanced cross-linking and search capabilities to quickly find photos, videos, news and more for favorite plays and actors

Chicago, IL – April 6, 2012 – Chicago web development firm Adage Technologies, specializing in website and application development, announced today the launch of a new website and content management system for the Goodman Theatre, Chicago’s premier live theater presenter. The website can be found at: www.GoodmanTheatre.org.

Highlights of the new website include a rebranded design, easy to find and access multi-media content, and the ability to quickly edit and change content.

 “We started by thinking of features we could add that would help Goodman enrich its audience’s experience,” Roy Chomko, president of Adage Technologies, said. “Being able to quickly upload interesting, searchable media is especially important every time a new season of shows is launched. This includes show trailers, behind the scenes videos and photos, news articles, reviews, blogs, event photos, and press releases. It’s the playbill of the future.”

By setting up cross-references throughout the site, visitors will be able to experience a media rich playbill before and after any performance. The constantly growing image galleries and video content are easier to maintain and readily available to users.

The new search capability gives users a great amount of detail in a quick, easy-to-find format. Searching for a specific show or actor reveals a wealth of multimedia content, complete with clickable tabs for biographies, photos, videos, blog posts, news articles and upcoming events.

“We’re thrilled with our new virtual home—and we couldn’t have found a better partner than Adage Technologies. Our robust e-commerce site, which also includes an archive dating back to the Goodman’s inception in 1925, could not have happened without Adage Technologies and their team of experts. They are responsive, solution-oriented and attentive to every detail. Just after launching, our traffic is up 33% from last year. Now, that’s what I call a success,” exclaimed Lori Kleinerman, Director of Marketing and Public Relations for Goodman Theatre.

 “Incorporating rich media like photography and video is an essential aspect of working with a performing arts organization,” Chomko added. “Goodman Theatre is now able to tag content to multiple parts of the website, linking the relationships between the facility, performances and actors into one full story.”

With the rebranded version of the site, Goodman Theatre patrons will continue to enjoy online features like selecting your own seat, subscription renewals, making donations, and renewing memberships.

Finally, a simple process for updating the website was important for a business like Goodman Theatre, which requires regular site changes. With that in mind, Adage implemented a new content management system. Using the EPiServer platform, Goodman Theatre staff can now edit the website as details change, keeping patrons up to date with show information and eliminating the often stressful process of waiting on an IT professional to enter content.

About Adage Technologies

Adage Technologies was formed in 2001 with a specific focus on driving business value through web technology. Today, Adage offers a wide variety of business technology solutions, including custom software, content management, and mobile applications. The company provides web development solutions across a variety of industries, including healthcare/medical, performing arts, and insurance. To learn more, visit www.adagetechnologies.com.

About Goodman Theatre:

Goodman Theatre, “the leading regional theater in the nation’s most important theater city” (Time), is a major cultural, educational and economic pillar in Chicago, generating nearly $300 million in economic impact over the past decade in its state-of-the-art two-theater complex on North Dearborn Street. Founded in 1925 and currently under the leadership of Artistic Director Robert Falls, “Chicago’s most essential director” (Chicago Tribune), and Executive Director Roche Schulfer, Chicago’s oldest and largest not-for-profit resident theater has welcomed nearly two million patrons to productions and events.  The Goodman has earned more than 90 awards for hundreds of productions, including the Pulitzer Prize for Ruined by Lynn Nottage—one of 25 new work Goodman commissions in the last decade. American Airlines is the Exclusive Airline of Goodman Theatre. To learn more, visit www.GoodmanTheatre.org.

Event Focused on Celebrating Innovation in Illinois

Chicago, IL – Adage Technologies joined TechAmerica, the leading voice of the U.S. technology industry, in New York City on Tuesday, November 15 to open the NASDAQ Stock Market, the premier exchange for technology companies. The event, arranged by TechAmerica, emphasized the Association's Illinois Tech Index (NASDAQ: ILTI), the winners of the 2011 Chicago Innovation Awards, and the growing innovation economy in Illinois and the city of Chicago.

"This annual event is an excellent example of TechAmerica's dedication to supporting growth, visibility and advocacy for the Illinois technology industry," said Ed Longanecker, Executive Director, Regional Vice President, TechAmerica Midwest. "We applaud Adage Technologies for their commitment to innovation and ongoing achievements."

"Being a part of this event is exciting.  This year we had the pleasure of having Illinois' Govenor Quinn join us for the opening followed by a roundtable discussion," said Roy Chomko, President of Adage Technologies. "It was great to have the opportunity to advocate on behalf of technology firms in Illinois with Governor Quinn and share with other technology leaders."

About Adage Technologies

Adage Technologies was formed in 2001 with a specific focus on driving business value through web technology. Today, Adage offers a wide variety of business technology solutions, including custom software, content management, and mobile applications. The company specializes in providing solutions for across a variety of industries, including healthcare/medical, entertainment, and insurance. To learn more, visit www.adagetechnologies.com.

About TechAmerica

TechAmerica is the leading voice for the U.S. technology industry – the driving force behind productivity growth and jobs creation in the United States and the foundation of the global innovation economy. Representing approximately 1,000 member companies of all sizes from the public and commercial sectors of the economy, it is the industry's largest advocacy organization and is dedicated to helping members' top and bottom lines. TechAmerica is also the technology industry's only grassroots-to-global advocacy network, with offices in state capitals around the United States, Washington, D.C., Europe (Brussels) and Asia (Beijing). Learn more about TechAmerica at www.techamerica.org.

CHICAGO, August 29, 2011 – Adage Technologies was ranked No. 3375 by Inc. Magazine on its fifth annual Inc. 5000, an exclusive ranking of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. The Inc. 5000 represents a comprehensive look at the most important segment of the economy—America’s independent entrepreneurs.

Adage Technologies has seen their bottom line grow dramatically each year. The company’s three-year sales growth is 54 percent, and the 2010 revenue was up 25 percent after a 10 percent increase in 2009. Adage’s dedication to providing an unsurpassed service experience has is credited with its success. In the last year, nine new employees were added to the Adage team to assist with additional web, software and application development projects for the increasing list of clients.

“Adage Technologies has been growing as a company in all areas. We’re very proud to be recognized by the esteemed Inc. 5000 listing, and are excited to continue expanding our business” said Roy Chomko, President of Adage Technologies.

In a stagnant economic environment, median growth rate of 2011 Inc. 500|5000 companies remains an impressive 94 percent. The companies on this year’s list report having created 350,000 jobs in the past three years, and aggregate revenue among the honorees reached $366 billion, up 14 percent from last year.

Online retailer ideeli tops this year’s list.  Adage Technologies also joins Spirit Airlines, television maker Vizio, Honest Tea, Dunkin Donuts and Metrokane, makers of the Rabbit corkscrew, among other prominent brands featured on this year’s list. Complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found at www.inc.com/5000.  To the Adage Technologies profile, it can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000/profile/adage-technologies

About Adage Technologies

Adage Technologies was formed in 2001 with a specific focus on driving business value through web technology. Today, Adage offers a wide variety of business technology solutions, including custom software, content management, and mobile applications. The company specializes in providing solutions for across a variety of industries, including healthcare/medical, entertainment, and insurance.

Methodology

The 2011 Inc. 500 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2007 to 2010. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2007. Additionally, they had to be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2010. (Since then, a number of companies on the list have gone public or been acquired.) The minimum revenue required for 2007 is $100,000; the minimum for 2010 is $2 million. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons. Companies on the Inc. 500 are featured in Inc.’s September issue. They represent the top tier of the Inc. 5000, which can be found at www.inc.com/500.

About Inc. Magazine

Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures LLC, Inc. (www.inc.com) is the only major business magazine dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies that delivers real solutions for today’s innovative company builders. With a total paid circulation of 710,106, Inc. provides hands-on tools and market-tested strategies for managing people, finances, sales, marketing, and technology.

About the Inc. 500|5000 Conference

Each year, Inc. and Inc.com celebrate the remarkable achievements of today’s entrepreneurial superstars—the privately held small businesses that drive our economy. The Inc. 500|5000 Conference & Awards Ceremony brings together members of the Inc. community, both a new class of Inc. 500|5000 honorees and the list’s alumni, for three days of powerful networking, inspired learning, and momentous celebration. Please join us September 22–24, 2011, at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, located minutes from downtown Washington, D.C. For more information about the 2011 Inc. 500|5000 Conference & Awards Ceremony and to register, visit www.inc500conference.com or call 866-901-3205.

We recently had a client call and they had been working in their content management system and she accidentally deleted (she had admin rights) the entire blog section of their web site.  The blog had over a year's worth of entries and they posted at least once a week.

Obviously they were very concerned that they had lost all of their blog entries for an entire year.  They did not ... we had a backup of the site.  However, another problem lied in the fact that while we had a backup of the database from the night before, other people in the organization had made 40 other content changes.  We determined this by running a query against the database for changes since the backup the night before.  We could not simply restore the backup copy of the database because all of the other 40 plus content changes on the site would have been lost for that day.

On further inspection, one of our developers was able to take the backup copy of the database from the night before and retore ONLY the blog posts.  So, the only thing "lost" was one blog posting for that day.  We received this emergency notice from the client at 2:32PM.  The blogs were restored by 5:34pm.  This involved triaging the problem, restoring a backup copy of the database, verifying our what we could do, obtaining confirmation from the client, and restoring the blog to the production servers.

This is an example of the type of support we provide every day to our clients ... regardless of their size.  Every site and database gets backed up.  Every client is important.  Can your developer and/or hosting provider do this?

I agree with Steve Jobs.  Yes, Adage is a Microsoft Gold Partner and I said that.  A lot of controversy has been surrounding this lately with Apple refusing to support Flash on the iPhone and the iPad.  You can read more about it in this article.

I of course don't really mean we should get rid of Flash as I think it is a great technology.  But I do think Flash is being overused as a tool in the web designer/developer toolkit.

Ok, to the point ... first I am going to assume you are looking to implement some animation on a portion of your web site that highlights your services or work examples, etc.  Stop reading if you are one of those people who think building entire sites in Flash is a good idea ... we are going to have to agree to disagree.

Over the last several projects, we have been doing more and more with CSS, DHTML, jQuery and JavScript to where animations do not require Flash with very similar effects. Why is this good?

• Less overhead
• No special tools required
• Search engine-friendly markup
• More control

Some examples of non-Flash animation:

• Adage Home
• Adage Client Examples
• Lovejoy Home
• Seko Logistics Home

Again, no Flash needed! Let me detail why this is good.

Less Overhead

To provide the effects you see on those pages, a Flash player is not required.  Therefore, the Flash player does not have to start and you do not have to stare at a spinning circle or other graphic telling you to wait a minute to see what you visited the web site for.  With Flash, you often have to wait for the content that has been deemed important enough to draw your attention but in many cases you have to wait.

No special tools needed

When a Flash movie is made, it requires that a file first be created by a developer or designer using a desktop tool from Adobe called Flash Professional.  This is not cheap and can be cumbersome to use in the wrong hands.  So, if you want to make ANY changes, they have to be made by someone with the software (your developer).  There are ways around this but it takes more time and effort to make simple changes.

Search engine-friendly markup

Search engines do not view Flash content in the same manner that they do HTML text.  In the last few years, they have taken steps to try an index Flash content but it is far from perfect.  It is getting better but the accepted general rule of thumb is do not rely on the search engines to index Flash well if at all.

More Control

Flash content that you see on web sites derives from an original source file in which the designer or developer manipulates all of the text, graphics, audio, video and animations. Once a developer is done working in this file, they output this source file as a compiled Flash movie, at which point it becomes uneditable without going back to the original source in Flash. This creates a problem later when changes need to be made to the Flash movie and the developer has left town or they do not want to give you the original source file.  This is something that happens often.

jQuery must live on the site in standard JavaScript files that can be edited and accessed if needed with standard HTML editing tools.  So, if your developer skips out, you already have the "source" and someone with a little knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript can often make a change.

There must be a better way

Again, I am not advocating the elimination of Flash as a tool ... just suggesting a little more HTML, jQuery, and CSS can go a long way to a better web site.  HTML 5 is very compelling as an alternative but that discussion will have to wait for another blog.