The food sucks and the portions are too small

I’ve been browsing lists of small technology companies in the SF and Boston areas. Many of these small companies have terrible websites. Each is bad in its own special way. Some have too much markety jargon (“the leading provider of software solutions that enable service providers to accelerate the creation, control and delivery of high-value applications as hosted services?” Nobody’s accelerating anywhere with that kind of turgid copy.) Some sites are from web design companies who can’t design a navigable UI to save their lives– or who have a variety of dead links in their menus.

More informative and more interesting, though, are the sites for industries that time forgot, like Viable, provider of CAD solutions for Jacquard looms. It reminded me that the tech-driven industry has been living in Boston for a long time: Lowell was founded shortly after 1820 for those newfangled mills.