Jenn wins, its for extending the length of a USB cable. At least that is what i have seen those for.

hdw – nope no notch. It seems that it indeed might just be a plug “slimmer”.

Craig – I ran lsusb on it, and it gave me nothing. It’s acting as if nothing was plugged into the USB port.

Does it have a notch in the middle of one of the long sides of the female side? Some old USB keyboard cables (Macs?) had a extra ridge in one side that kept them from being put anyplace other than directly into the back slot of the computer. The ridge kept the cable from fitting into a standard USB hub or other external devise. This could be a way of getting around that…

Actually now I think about it, the problem computer in question (not mine, in a school library) had a really big fat cable in another slot, I think for the monitor, that was big enough to block access to the USB port

very annoying :x

Could be – that would be the simplest solution I guess. Although most of USB plugs are relatively slim and skinny at the base – cause the manufacturers know those USB ports are usually like 2 milimiters away from eachother.

Also like Jenn said this might be like a conector kinda thing. Hmmm… Then again, if you were making a little conector thing, wouldn’t you make it female-female? Usually most USB cords are either male on both sides….

I’ve found occasionally that something I’m plugging into a USB port (memory stick, cable, w/e) won’t fit because its too wide and there’s something else plugged into the port next to it

Maybe its to move the point of plug-in back a bit to avoid that kind of situation – get it to the point where a cable in the other slot is able to bend away and let you plug in your fat flash drive

There are no markings on it whatsoever, but I haven’t tried plugging it into the system. I would imagine that keylogger or a sniffer would be slightly bulkier – there doesn’t seem to be much space in there for any circuit board. I will take a comparison shot of it next to a USB to PS2 adapter – they are almost the same size.

Craig – thanks for the suggestion lsusb it is. To bad I left it at home. :(

I will post lsusb output here when I get home.

*slaps forehead*

Put into a Linux system and run lsusb!

Is the connector a “straight-through” type? Might be of of those signal enhancers like you used to see on the end of USB 1.1 extensions. How about a pass-through dongle?

I know . . . some one made that just to stir-up controversy!

Is there a USB ID code on it (plug it in and check if the OS responds to it)?

In other words . . . NFC

It’s in case one cord isn’t long enough (sometimes printers only come with cords that are a foot long :/) and you need to use more than one to connect.

And for jumping rope.