Buoy Tags: A simple and effective way to organize cables
As part of research for a book I'm working on, I'm trying to find ways of organizing my life both logically and physically. When it comes to physical objects, I find that I'm overwhelmed with cables. Not only do I have a pile of cables that all look the same but are for different devices, but my wife often has identical cables so we don't know which cable belongs to which person. Buoy Tags (US$12 for three) are a new product designed to identify the purpose and owner of those little white cables in your life.
Each Buoy Tag is a small two-piece plastic device that snaps together to hold onto a thin cable -- specifically your MagSafe power adapter cable, your Dock connector cable, and your iPhone headphone cable. One part of the tag is a bright red plastic, the other is clear. The tags come "assembled," and a top for one cable can't be used with the bottom for another. The Buoy Tag comes with sets of pre-printed letters and color swatches that can be dropped into the clear section of the tag for identification purposes.
The red part of the tag has a channel into which you lay the cable before snapping the clear part on top. If you need more than just letters and colors, Buoy Tags provides templates in Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft Word, and Adobe Photoshop formats that you can fill in with diminutive text. The tags work well, look good, and stay on the cables.
The idea is perfect for homes or offices where there are a lot of Apple devices, as it will stop those petty arguments over who owns a particular cable. It's a simple idea, and a good one.