OK, here we go! 

The Duplex Systems team has announced in their forums that the first wave of Face of Mankind betas will be mailed out by the end of this week.  Here is the text of the post, dated March 29: 

Dear community, Finally, the week has come. We are proud to announce that the fist BETA stage for Face of Mankind will begin shortly. Now the community and the developers move even closer together, building a great persistent virtual world of the 24th century, which we call Face of Mankind. At the moment we are selecting the few lucky ones who will be able to participate in Beta 1. We will spend the rest of the week with preparing the Beta install version and with testing the automatic patching procedure. Everything will be ready by the end of the week. The email invitations to our lucky beta testers will most likely be sent out on Saturday evening. Thanks to all of you who have applied for the Face of Mankind Betatest. One important note at the end, please don't ask around who was invited for Beta! That information is protected by NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement), so nobody is allowed to answer you this question. The Duplex Systems Staff

Thanks to Brian, SysOp of Devacon Labs and a partner of MMORPG.com for the tip on this.  Be sure to visit his website by clicking on this link.

Beta applications are still being taken at the official Face of Mankind website, which may be accessed here.