Perhaps it was simply an available letter, as saghm said, but I've always imagined that at least part of the origin story is that it's a mnemonic for "invert" or "negative".
On an earlier page[1] the author mentions that they at one point "designed a more complex backplate which included […] a built in micro SD card reader, that you could read directly by plugging in a micro USB cable", among other things. Unfortunately, they go on to lament that this made the watch comically thick. As you say, the strap might be a good place to cram a USB interface without bulking up the watch body.
I managed 20 years of driving without seeing the arrow, probably because I was never looking for it?
I heard it mentioned on a radio show once but they said the side the tank filler was on corresponded to the nozzle on the pump icon - no mention of an arrow.
I still didn't notice an arrow until the time the nozzle on the icon actually didn't correspond to the filler tank.
> I managed 20 years of driving without seeing the arrow, probably because I was never looking for it?
Or because most cars historically haven't had it. I've only seen it in relatively recent cars (last 5 years maybe?) and even then not on all of them.
> I heard it mentioned on a radio show once but they said the side the tank filler was on corresponded to the nozzle on the pump icon - no mention of an arrow.
That one's not actually true, at least not consistently. Sometimes it works sometimes it does not so it's useless. The arrow, when present, is always correct.
I have a 2006 Chevy Impala, and the arrow is there. I had it for about two years before reading about the arrow and never noticed ("saw") it, but now it's the first thing I notice when looking at another car's instrument panel.
Right on the money. curses needs to die and we need to make better use of our resources. It's eye-opening to explore these projects that "never caught on" even though they had great ideas that we still don't see today. (Granted, those projects truly never gained popularity for other reasons.) I'm glad to see that there are others thinking about these things. The current state of things bothers me enough that I will do something about it, but I'm afraid that I am something of an extremist and that my particular solution won't satisfy many other people. Because of this, I expect more popular alternatives to arise while I am hacking my own.
> I don't think allowing websites to use specific font names in CSS was ever a good idea.
I'm with you there. I can't help feeling babied when I visit most websites these days, for more reasons than simply the commonplace (over)use of web fonts.
