A silly tip for the tips of your USB cables

In 1996, most of us had no clue what USB was or what it meant to us. I read an article at the time that described the wonder that would be USB. One point I remember clearly was the large concerted effort to produce a standard that would do away with all of the shortcomings of older interfaces: a perfect cable for a perfect interface.

But…

I think a couple of the pages in their long evaluation checklist must have stuck together, because they clearly missed the part of the process where someone was supposed to actually try to plug one of the darned things in behind a computer in a dark closet with fifteen other cables bound in knots any sailor would be proud of.

Granted, USB cables plug in much better than many of their predecessors, such as those round multi-pin connectors found on older mice and keyboards, but the specification left one tiny detail out that would have made an already good idea better…

Which Side is Up?

There is no clear way to tell which side goes up. That’s it. I tire of trying to distinguish the vague impression of the USB logo on one side of a cable in dim lighting. All they needed to do was require a small bump be present on the top side, in perfect thumb location.

[I]t is not obvious at a glance to the inexperienced user (or to a user without sight of the installation) which way around the connector goes, thus it is often necessary to try both ways. More often than not, however, the side of the connector with the trident logo should be on “top” or “toward” the user. Most manufacturers do not, however, make the trident easily visible or detectable by touch. (Wikipedia)

My answer to the problem?

You see it in the picture above. I stole a bottle of coral nail polish from my wife and I carefully paint dots or stripes on the corresponding bits of any kind of connector.

My wife complained about the difficulty of fitting the tiny USB connector in her cell phone, so I placed a big dot on the top side of that one (though I left the phone untouched). I have also given similar treatment to many other connectors in my home.

Life is too short to keep trying to figure out which side of a cable fits where. Put little dots on them and be done with it!