A number of people have suggested features for Skills Log; some of which we already have planned; some are great suggestions which we’ll look at implementing. We are careful however about which features we factor in, there’s a lot to be said for less features and less code, but all suggestions are welcome nonetheless.

Some of the main features we’ll be introducing are as follows:

• Facebook Integration - allowing users to publish their skills log to Facebook and search the skills of their Facebook contacts. We also plan on supporting Facebook Connect so users can sign up to Skills Log using their Facebook ID.
• OpenSocial Integration - again allowing users to publish their skills log to websites that support OpenSocial, such as iGoogle, MySpace, Ning, and particularly business networks such as LinkedIn and XING.
• Groups - this feature is already under way and allows users to set up a group of other Skills Log users, and then search their skills, or view users by hierarchy. This will be particularly useful for companies to create a skill-searchable staff directory, embeddable as a ‘white-label’ group within a companies’ own Intranet or website.
• Opening up our API - with appropriate privacy controls, opening our API will allow developers to mix and mashup Skills Log data to create new applications or build on top of other applications.
• Job Searching - allowing users to search for jobs that closely match their skills. Rather than just searching using keywords as on current job sites, job searching using your skills and skill levels through Skills Log will be much more accurate.
• hResume Formatting - a microformat to add meta data to skills logs.
• OpenID support - allowing users to create a skills log using an ID provided by an OpenID provider.
• Twitter Integration - allowing users to publish their skills log updates to their Twitter stream.
• Improving Resources - to allow documents and videos to be uploaded or pulled in from Scribd, YouTube and other external websites.

Any comments on these planned features, or further suggestions are more than welcome!

It’s taken much longer than expected, but Skills Log is now officially live!

Skills Log aims to be the LinkedIn of the Facebook generation, focusing more on ‘what you know’ rather than ‘who you know’.

Current business networks focus on relationships more than skills and knowledge and are of limited use to people with few business contacts. Even if you do connect to contacts through a business network, what then? Social networks such as Facebook and MySpace also have their place; but do you want your colleagues and business acquaintances to see your holiday snaps and Bejewelled scores?

With Skills Log you can create a focal point for your professional career development by listing your skills, education and experience, and crucially rating your skill levels. With Skills Log you can:

• Create an interactive CV/résumé showing your skills and how skilled you are
• Search for skills to learn based on your occupation, so if you’re a budding accountant you can see what skills other accountants have (and therefore what you should maybe learn)
• Connect to your friends/colleagues/fellow students so you can see what they know, or search their skills to find anyone you know who might speak Spanish, or is an expert at Excel for example
• Add links and images to your skills or import them from Delicious and Flickr
• Create a focal point for your career development: work to improve your skill levels

We’re launching as a ‘private beta’ for a short period; so to register you’ll need an invite code. If you want to try the site out you can use invite code ‘csparkinvite‘ (while they’re still available), or submit your email address through the Skills Log homepage and we’ll send you a code when more become available.

You can stay up-to-date with what’s happening with Skills Log via RSS or twitter, and feel free to send us feedback about the site through this blog or via the feedback button on the site itself: we really welcome comments, good or bad!

I’ve been playing around creating a Facebook Application for WorkMugs that lets you run a drink decider with your Facebook friends to decide who makes the tea.  Creating the application has been more of a familiarisation exercise than anything else in readiness for creating an application for Skills Log.  Skills Log will make much more use of the Facebook functionality, but I thought I’d test the water with WorkMugs.

The first thing that struck me is the potential for integrating a distinct stand-alone website with Facebook. It is however a steep learning curve and the documentation isn’t that great, and from reading the forums it seems that some things on the platform can change with little or no notice - I noticed this myself when my javascript stopped working from one day to the next, the result of a tweak they seemed to have quietly made with how javascript is handled.  That said, the tools and platform are very impressive, now to start on the app for Skills Log…

Working in the Internet industry I’ve been aware of Twitter for a long time, but up until yesterday I didn’t understand the appeal; I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to write small snippets of messages. If someone has something to write about I reasoned there are a 101 tools out there to set up a blog in 5 minutes, and if they wanted to keep in touch with friends there’s Facebook where every man and his dog already has a profile.

On Sunday I fired a few emails off to blogs/publications that I thought might be interested in the quirkiness of our latest site, WorkMugs.com. One of said blogs belongs to Emma Jones who founded Enterprise Nation, a useful resource for home businesses (and based in my own town of Shrewsbury as it happens). On Monday Emma dropped me an email to say she liked both WorkMugs and My50, which was great, but she also said she’d twittered about both sites. Curious, I checked out both tweets and noticed a few of her followers had responded to her about WorkMugs. Searching on Twitter showed that a few people had then twittered about WorkMugs themselves as a consequence.

So now I get it! it’s the brevity and immediacy of the tool. It’s much easier for someone to fire off a quick message on Twitter as soon as they hear something of interest, particularly if they’re already signed in to Twitter when they hear about it, rather than going to the time and effort of writing a full blog entry.

Further still, I created an account and started following Emma. So for Emma, by quickly twittering about a couple of sites she’s passed on something interesting to those following her, and by responding to my initial email and participating in the wider online community, she’s gained a new follower (me) to expand her immediate community.

Following Emma’s lead I’m giving Twitter a whirl, my username is @crdunst if you want to follow me, I hope I can pass on the favour shown to us by Twittering about sites and services I find interesting.

OK, lets try this again. We created this blog over a year ago with the intention of interacting with users of our sites; to announce updates and generally keep everyone informed of project developments. Between the demands of our full time work, our families, and working on Skills Log and WorkMugs in our spare time, the blog has fallen by the wayside. We’ve recently put WorkMugs live, and a private beta of Skills Log should be live in April, so we’ve decided to step it up a gear and breathe some life back into Collective Spark.

Another thing: we’ll be writing about or linking to all kinds of things, not just our projects. Anything that we like and want to share will make the cut: heart-warming stories such as the boy who was saved by a fireman dressed as spiderman, or an MEP telling some home truths to Gordon Brown, this is now our platform for communication.

More posts to follow, but in the meantime you could decide who’s making the tea, then make a list of things to do in your lifetime before the more serious, but essential, business of creating an interactive online CV for sharing your skills with friends and potential employers.