Yesterday the text surfaced of proposed legislation that would allow the FBI in the future to demand companies like Apple break their own encryption. This feels like too much. I can’t help but wonder what the founders would have thought of a government that reads your mail and orders lock smiths to give them master keys. 

Even though Congress appears broken, I could actually see them passing some form of this law if they throw the “terrorism” word around enough. As I’ve written before, this issue will never be resolved until the Supreme Court weighs in. 

Apparently someone at Apple left the camera rolling too long when Cookie Monster was on set for the latest Siri commercial. I love when Apple lets a little whimsey show.

Recently I made an offhand comment on the podcast about how I write email backwards. This triggered a bunch of email questions so I thought I’d explain further with an excerpt from my Email Field Guide. Here you go.

Email Write Order

I’ve always had a gripe with email application developers concerning the way they want us to write emails. When you go to write an email, the tab order is all out of whack.

The default write order starts out with you selecting the recipient for your message, which makes enough sense, but then everything goes off the rails. Next, it wants you to type in the subject line for a message you haven’t written yet. Because you haven’t written the message, there is a bit of mental friction between us getting our thoughts together and making a cogent subject line at that time, so we skip it or just leave it with whatever the mail client added (e.g., “re: re: re: re: re: That Thing”).

Next, the application wants you to write the body of your message. Rarely does the application even prompt you to add an attachment, which means about half the time you’ll forget to add an attachment. Because the default write order is all out of whack, so are the messages we often send using it. It makes a lot more sense to add attachments next and then write the body of the message before filling out the subject line and sending. I’ve got an alternative write order that makes a lot more sense.

1. Add Attachments

Don’t you hate getting an email making reference to a nonexistent attachment? Don’t you hate even worse when you send an email making reference to an attachment you forgot to attach?

2. Compose the Message Body

The next thing you do is write the message. That’s the reason you started this whole process. I have some very specific ideas about how to write the message body with inline replies—and explain that later in this chapter—but for now get into the habit of writing the message body next. Also on the subject of the message body, try and keep it brief. Email is a problem for everyone and sending a 3,000-word screed when all you really want is to borrow the industrial plunger isn’t very nice.

3. Add a Sane Signature

Email signatures should be simple and smaller than the body of the message. There is more on this later in this chapter.

4. Write the Subject Line

Finally, after you’ve attached any necessary files and written everything else, make an intelligent subject line.

5. Enter the Message Recipient and Copies

Waiting until last to add the recipient assures you’ll never suffer from premature email sendation.

6. Proof and Send

Read the whole thing one last time and send it off into the world.

Want to learn more about email? Check out my Email Field Guide.

For the last several months we’ve had a secret project here in the Sparks household. My wife, Daisy, has been working to bring App Camp for Girls to Orange County, California. Like most ventures of this nature, it already feels like we could make an epic movie about all the highs and lows we’ve experienced getting this far but I’m pleased to share the fact that App Camp for Girls Orange County is going to happen August 8-12, 2016. We now have a location and several volunteers ready to teach some lucky girls how to make their own apps. There are, however a few things we are looking for:

1. We Need Campers

Registration is now open and we need campers. Specifically, we’re looking for girls entering 8th or 9th grade in the fall.

2. We Need a Female User Interface Designer

I know there are some superbright female user interface designers out there in Southern California. We need one of you to volunteer to come in for an afternoon and teach the girls about user interface design. If that’s you, please reach out to the below contact information.

3. We Need Volunteers

We already have several people volunteering their time to help run the camp. We still need a few more. If you’re interested, the camp is going to be the week of August 8-12. Again, if that’s you, reach out to us below.

4. Funding

App Camp for Girls can always use an additional bit of funding. It is a registered nonprofit and donations are a great way to help out a good cause. You can learn more at the App Camp for Girls website right here.

If you would like to help out with any of the above items, you can email me or go straight to the boss.

While Apple has held the unenviable lime-light over digital privacy lately, they are not alone. Today WhatsApp announced that, like Apple’s iMessage service, WhatsApp service will feature end-to-end encryption. As a result, they’ll be unable to monitor your messages and unable to respond to any Government subpoena. Even more importantly to most of us, hackers also will have no vector to read our private WhatsApp communications.

I can’t help but think that the FBI/Apple dispute of the last few months had the effect of raising this issue generally in the public conscious and companies like Apple and WhatsApp are going to continue to push forward on writing code that excludes them from reading their own user’s data.

The interesting part will be the companies that are not taking these steps and not trumpeting their efforts to secure their networks. There will providers that don’t bother for reasons like the fact that this is pretty hard or they may need to read your data to monetize or they don’t want to get tarred and feathered the way Apple did a few months ago. Either way, I think there is a divergence approaching and as users, we’d be wise to know which of our service providers are taking data security seriously and which are not.