BusinessWeek.com: If you've ever inwardly cringed at the thought of being subjected to yet another crappy Powerpoint presentation for fear of bloated, confusing and just plain poorly presented tables of data, Adam Aston's recent piece on Edward Tufte (pronounced TUFF-tee) might be just what you need. In his special report, Tufte's Invisible Yet Ubiquitous Influence, Aston reports on one man's quest to make data presentation elegant, simple and full of meaning:

"In dismantling some of the worst habits of two dimensional design, he has framed new analytical terms that flicker through many design conservations. For Tufte, 'chart junk' is the kudzu of modern information work. It includes the ubiquitous, unneeded words and addenda that tend to crowd the margins of corporate communication, from PowerPoint to project management charts and financial reports. Most of this junk can be removed without diminishing understanding. 'Clutter is a failure of design, not an attribute of information,' Tufte writes in Envisioning Information." A self-published polymath with a penchant for making difficult numeric presentations sing, Tufte is constantly on the road and continues his efforts to make your next PowerPoint presentation end with a standing ovation instead of groans, or worse yet, snores.

OnStartups.com: Once again, Dharmesh Shah weighs in with some relevant thoughts on startups, as is his frequent wont. In response to the myriad comments on one of his most popular previous blog posts on the free/freemium/subscription Internet business model, Shah takes it on himself to layout a few tips and hints on making a go of the "freemium" including this gem: "1. If you’re playing the 'freemium' game, you need to look at this for what it is:  a marketing expense.  If it takes 100 free users to get 1 paying customer, you may have a problem (because the 100 free users are costing you something, and that’s contributing to the acquisition cost of the customer you got).  My guess is that conversation rates vary widely, but let’s use 1% because it makes the math easy.  If it costs you about $2/year to support a customer, that means you have $200/expenses for your 100 free customers that it took to get you one paying customer.  Maybe, with your pricing, this makes sense. Maybe it doesn’t." Whether or not the model will work in your case is something you'll have to puzzle out for yourself, but don't let that stop you from catching the rest of Shah's excellent post on Web 2.0, Startup Pricing Models: Free Forever, Freemium and Freedom To Pay.

Open Forum: As a follow up to his super coverage of a visit to the USS Nimitz for some Navy social web goodness, Guy Kawasaki presents a guest post by fellow air carrier visitor, Bill Reichert, Top Ten Lessons from the US Navy: Management Lessons on an Aircraft Carrier at Sea. In his piece, Reichert relates the things he and Guy observed during their stay on board one of the world's modern technological military wonders and item number 3 in his list could very well be the best takeaway from the group: "Teamwork: As much as the movie Top Gun created the impression that it’s about competing to be Number 1, the ethic in an actual operating situation is intensely about team performance. Watching the crews maintain, fuel, setup, and pilot F-18s for flight, it’s clear it’s not about who’s the hottest dog on the deck. Every single person counts on other members of the team to enable them to get their part of the job done, and no one person can take credit for success, or benefit from another’s failure." Every successful operation needs synergy and teamwork to be more than commonplace: excellence lies in the hands of every person and each of them knows that without their individual efforts the mission would fail. That's power, and powerful. What does you business do in order to create a sense of ownership and pride in your team members?

Entrepreneur.com: By now the news is out that the Small Business Association is offering stimulus loans to help SMEs bridge the cash gap back to stability and profits but do you know any specifics of the program? Mark Deo does, and he shares his inside knowledge of this Obama administration lifeline in his timely, and dare I say, topical piece The Low Down on ARC Loans. Here's the lowdown on how the loans function: "The loans are 100 percent guaranteed by the SBA and made by existing SBA 7(a) lenders. They have no SBA or lender fees associated with them (unless the lender must secure collateral as part of the loan). The disbursement period (up to six months) is followed by a 12- month deferral period with no repayment of principal. After the deferral period, the borrower pays back only the ARC loan principal over a five-year period. ARC loans are available through SBA-approved lenders as long as funding is available or through Sept. 30, 2010, whichever comes first, and cannot be used to make payments on another SBA-guaranteed loan, with the exceptions of loans made with an SBA guaranty after Feb. 17, 2009." There are a number of other caveats to qualifying for this particular loan program, but it's worth checking out the rest of Deo's piece to find out if you can take advantage of this excellent opportunity.

The New York Times: Lastly, but definitely not leastly, a piece on how to get your pitch together before you take on the monumental task of getting an angel to invest in your mashing entrepreneurial startup. Brent Bowers reports, "What angels are looking for...is evidence of a market opportunity with growth potential, a strong management team and an exit strategy, including a list of possible acquirers, since the eventual sale of the companies they invest in is how they make money." Seems pretty straightforward, but there are some possible pitfalls along the way. Like not being willing/able to admit that you don't know the answer to an angel's question, unrealistic projections of profits and the timeline to profitability, and the importance of having a product in the market that shows a solid effort on your part to make the first, hard step towards a real, live business: investing your own hard-won dollars. Read Bower's complete story, In Pitching to Angel Investors, Preparation Tops Zeal to learn the secrets behind angel investment attainment.