I’ve gotten some mail on this, so I wanted to clarify.

The private beta begins on Monday. We’ll be inviting about 300 randomly selected people by email. If you don’t get invited, don’t fret. We’re ensuring that earlybirds don’t claim all the good urls… Then, as the test proceeds, every day we’ll invite some more people until the entire list of secret beta volunteers is online… soon after that, we’ll open up the beta to the public. (and yes, you can still sign up: Squidoo Secret Beta)

Hope that helps!