The Museum of Modern Betas? Del.icio.us!

So this friend of mine wants to tell me about his new company, new product. But he's suave, he doesn't just email me, "Hey, Mr. Ur-So-Kool Press Bigshot, write me up." Instead he invites to me to connect to him on LinkedIn. Very subtle. He knows I'll backtrack his email address. I do. I find his company Web site. Product's still in the oven. Hmmm. But I also find it's listed on the Museum of Modern Betas' "Most Anticipated" List. What? Very cool site, if you like finding out early about new stuff. (My friend's product is No. 11.)The Museum of Modern Betas (MoMB to its friends) is a Web site that lists, guess what, beta products and services -- and even some alphas. Appropriately enough, its creator, Saurier Duval, says the site "is in early alpha, I still need to figure a few things out." (Although it's been up for over a year, according to Google, so maybe he's just adapting to the pace of some of the companies he's covering. He's put up more than 3,000 so far.

The betas are sliced and diced several ways -- the "Most Anticipated List" is one way to look at them, but there's also "Recently" for new additions, "By Invitation" for betas open only by invitation, and "Special: Alpha" for, that's right, alphas. The "Hot 100" list ranks betas by the number of bookmarks they've gotten in the last week on del.icio.us, while the "Top 100" ranks them by total del.icio.us bookmarks. The least useful list of all may be "Flickr.icio.us" -- it ranks the top 100 sites with names inspired by "Flickr."

It may sound just a touch too zany to be useful, but if you haven't heard of Kuler, Google Web site optimizer, Twittervision, Tapefailure, Netvibes, Flickr, Scrapblog, Zamzar, Fotowoosh, or Foxytunes Planet yet, then MoMB is smarter than you are so you shouldn't criticize.