In Linux you can run lsusb on the command line to list all currently connected USB devices but you may find a number of the entires give a pretty generic or blank name for the device.

This is simply because those devices aren't listed in your copy of the USB ID database, this database can be easily updated with USBUtils update-usbids.

Awesome problem solved... So what's the problem? You will notice that if you run update-usbids and then run it again right away you will download the database twice.. but I already have an upto date copy of the database...