Technorati just introduced the Technorati Kitchen, an area where we can post projects we have been working on that we do not feel are ready for integration on the main site. The first project available in the Technorati Kitchen is Explore, a way to discover the most popular recent blog posts around a specific topic of interest. You can use Explore to see emerging trends in the areas you care about or just catch up with the top stories of the day in a few minutes.
The beta moniker is so overused and abused no one can really take it seriously anymore. The kitchen is a place where you experiment with different ingredients and mixtures that may turn into things you would like to serve to guests. Your mixtures and recipes are in different states of readiness and some never make it out of the kitchen and instead end up in flames or in the garbage. Technorati wants to experiment with possible features and thrill our expert users while not scaring away new visitors and people just becoming familiar with blogging. I like the idea of a kitchen as a testing ground.
Any mad experimenting in a kitchen of course makes me think of Swedish Chef of The Muppets. Especially this video of Swedish Chef trying to bake some bread.
Explore is hopefully the first of many Technorati features introduced in the Kitchen. There will be more to say on the Technorati weblog once the team has a few hours of sleep.