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In response to your edit: Thanks!

I love reading this type of stuff. I'm mostly coming from a sociology background - my obsession with ants has lead down some interesting paths.

For future reference, here's where they can be read online based on google scholar:

An exploration of the psychological factors affecting remote e-worker's job effectiveness, well-being and work-life balance

[The role of emotion in computer-mediated communication: A review](http://www.researchgate.net/publication/222428783_The_role_of_emotion_in_computer-mediated_communication_A_review/file/9fcfd5086e96aeafcd.pdf
)

I'm personally a little off-put by the meta-analysis - they are referencing papers from 1987. Literally from months before I was born, before the iPad, before broadband took off. Worth a read I think, but it might need to be with a grain of salt.

I just finished "A theory of Remote Scientific Collaboration" and have started to read a couple of the papers that cite it.



Have you read either of these:
Distributed Work

Coordination Theory and Collaboration Technology

They seem to be written by scientists as apposed to the first hand experiences of the team behind Remote. I don't know if they are worth picking up.

One of my close friends worked at a software shop with a heavy focus on remote work and governance that competed directly with basecamp. His latest project was recreating Facebook style communication within the enterprise and we did a lot of brainstorming together and I looked up tons of research on how modern technology affects humans.

One of the biggest things I came away from it with is that you need to work extra hard to ensure that humans feel connected with each other when working remotely. The emoticons was just was facet of that - being an effective part of the 'virtual water cooler' as discussed in Rework.

I use a contract for everything. No matter how small the job, if it's for a friend, etc. Call it an agreement instead if you feel a contract is too imposing for your client, and be clear that it's to protect and benefit both parties. For smaller jobs less than $1k I like to take half the cost as a deposit. Bigger jobs I take milestones.

I would try to find contract resources specific to your industry. For example I'm a designer so I have a book from the Graphic Artist's Guild and it did a great job of explaining all of my rights and what to look out for.

Gotcha. Cause like I said, a lot of companies use those for tests either during or after interviews. So after busting my butt for two years after college, I finally got a journalism job. So I apologize for coming off like a D-Bag the other day, since I assumed you were trying to cheat on something that people strive really hard to break into.

But good luck on your studies! Also, try this

Yea, it's a textbook, but I honestly still use my older college edition at my office sometimes. Or if you don't have the latest AP style book, I'd recommend going out to get one. If you wait towards mid-December or mid-May, you should be able to snag a good used copy from Amazon.

I wish you very much luck, but I sincerely recommend that you take a look at the following books:

Design Basics Index

Thinking with Type

Working through these books, along with creating an actual portfolio site with either Cargo Collective or on your own will make a much bigger impression on potential clients. Sell yourself and the work will come.

Not trying to push anyone's book, but this made me feel a lot more comfortable about the whole deal. It's a nice fun read.

I know you're young and early in your career as a designer, but please, please, PLEASE don't create logos for $35. That tiny amount of money wouldn't even cover an hour of research, let alone the hours, days, and weeks it should take to create a proper brand.

Don't undersell yourself, and certainly don't undersell the work of other designers. If you're interested in pursuing a career as a designer, read this, get this, and keep up the good work.

Lemme save you all a bunch of money, or at least give you a way to spend your money with much greater utility:

The Art of Civilized Conversation: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0767921690 ($5-6 used)

How to Win Friends and Influence People: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0671027034 ($3-4 used)

The latter is almost certainly available from your local library for free; it's an incredibly famous book. AoCC might be harder to find. SAoNGaF, definitely at almost any library. Many of these are probably available online from your library a e-books.

Both books will teach you general "how to People" skills that will be much more useful than a one-off conversation about "How the hell to talk to girls." You'll learn how to talk to your landlord, friends, coworkers, customers, etc.

There are also tons of youtube videos and posts about body language and such. DO NOT READ ANY FROM DATING SITES PRODUCING CONTENT FOR MEN, or subreddits of a similar vein. They're probably at least borderline pickup artist garbage.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck (under $10 used) is probably also a worthwhile read.

Another recommendation would be Bene Brown's video on empathy. It's barely three minutes long, so a real quick listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw She's an author as well, and her books are definitely available from a lot of libraries.

Lastly, and this may sound hilariously stupid, but: a recent edition of Emily Post's etiquette book, or something similar. Consider it the equivalent of a social behavior Dictionary,

Agreed. Plus undercharging has its own ethical implications for the industry. Nab yourself a copy of this book and it will help you put a price on your work that is on par with the industry standard.

If anyone in your group knows any object oriented programming, you should try the Adobe Flex 4.6 Software Development Kit (free and open-source). It uses MXML and Actionscript to write iOS/Android/Blackberry apps. You can either write code by hand, compiling from the command line, or buy the program Adobe Flash Builder 4.6. It's an addon to eclipse for writing in MXML and Actionscript. It has eclipse's code hinting and debugging features. I'm currently teaching myself to build apps using these languages and Adobe tools. It's a helllll of a lot easier than learning Objective C. Your team could probably figure it out collectively. This book is making the process ten times easier and faster for me: http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Flex-4-5-Fundamentals-Training/dp/0321777123

That being said, if no one in your team has any experience with object oriented programming, you should probably hold off on this project temporarily. Do you want to pull all of your hair out writing an app now, or only half of your hair next year instead?

On their website it says to "contact your sales representative" which are listed on this page: http://www.oupcanada.com/higher_education/contacts_and_resources.html

You can also find it used on Amazon: http://www.amazon.ca/gp/offer-listing/0195442784/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all

Here ya go. http://www.amazon.de/dp/B00JDC9VSI/ref=asc_df_B00JDC9VSI19960449?smid=A3JWKAKR8XB7XF&tag=billigerde-21&linkCode=df0&creative=22494&creativeASIN=B00JDC9VSI

It was released June 20th, only in Germany so far.

Maybe this https://www.amazon.com/Black-Shoe-Storage-Cubbie-Bench/dp/B003FJJNFQ do I get $30?

I digress......

http://www.amazon.com/Crush-Time-Cash-Your-Passion/dp/0061914177

Go buy and read this book -

Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 3.0: How to Stand Out from the Crowd and Tap Into the Hidden Job Market using Social Media and 999 other Tactics Today
http://www.amazon.com/Guerrilla-Marketing-Job-Hunters-3-0/dp/1118019091/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

You could say that again

I wrote this for you really quick, it's a simple web service that will return the price given an amazon product id. Example: http://amazon-simple-price.heroku.com/product/0345331354 returns "$7.99"

If you know the amazon id, you already know the product URL: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/${the_id}/ so it is no necessary to return with the price.