Checkpoint Alpha - 3 months to go

A number of milestones:
1. The NaviBlog Website has just come online since early this morning, and we will be adding to it over the next few days.
2. The NaviBlog InfoPack has been created for NAVIBLOG hopefuls (as in we hope they want to work for us...) to give them an idea of what we stand for, where we're heading, who we are, what skills we are looking for and so on. Mostly derived from the website, but done up in a nice PDF format.
3. Meeting with a 3rd year Waseda Univ. computer science student next Monday, contacted through my British-Japan Society/Junior group contacts. We'll see what this person is like, if good then it's time to rumble.
4. The final bill re. NaviBlog hardware and software comes to a total of about 2.6m yen, which is more or less the budgeted amount. Need to get it OK'd this Friday at a board of directors meet.
5. The Beta version is headed for release in June, but much of that depends on getting someone on board asap, or risk falling behind. Anyone know a young software genius guy/girl hanging around Tokyo with time on their hands, you make sure you point them in my direction.
6. The NaviBlog patent is nearly there, we're having a final meeting with the IP lawyer gang tomorrow. If all is smoothed out, we should have a formal patent registration no. from the Japan Patent Office in less than 24h from now. Prices should be lower than what they (over)estimated for us earlier, but only just.
* Anyway, I feel like I stand at a kind of checkpoint, a watershed, like a pass between one climb and the next, a gentle ledge to take a breather. The alpha prototype is done, and the background work is more or less over. Now is the time to get dirty and get the real thing going. There really isn't that much time left.