[tjoff]

So... which side is the topside of the USB port?

That might be easy to figure out on a laptop but on an AC-charger? A workstation? A lot of ports are sideways.

And, the ports on my monitor are, by any conceivable scenario, rotated 180 degrees from what they should be (they are on the side and "up" in that scenario is facing away from me, towards the wall).

Stuff like this requires consistency so that you can trust your instinct, USB have failed miserably in this regard.

[dsr_]

The microUSB ports on my Droids are USB-stamp away from the display. The ports on my Nook and Nexus are USB-stamp towards the display.

[ConstantineXVI]

MiniUSB wasn't too bad; it's somewhat easy to figure out which end is up solely by touch. Not only is that nearly impossible with micro, OEM's can't seem to agree on "up". Samsung and Nokia goes with wide side down; HTC and Asus (on the N7, their other tablets use a custom dockplug) have wide side up. And just for fun, on the USB cable with my backup drive, WD decided to defy the spec and put their logo on the top side; and the USB logo on the bottom.

And the Apple dockplug is even worse IMHO; besides looking near-identical on both sides, the cable with my iPad 3 printed the logo so lightly it's quicker to guess vs. trying to find it.

[sp332]

The "top" is the part with a gap on the A end, and the narrow side on the B end.