Impressive is a free multi-platform app that can display any PDF file or folder containing image files (JPEG, PNG, TIFF and BMP) as a slideshow presentation. It can be used to present PDFs or images as full-screen PowerPoint-style presentations or it can function as a full-screen reader. “Impressive” also offers a combination of sophisticated slide transition effects and a number of practical presentation tools, including spotlight effects, box highlighting, zooming in, and an overview screen that displays slides as thumbnails and allows for quick navigation.

Dyson is a free cross-platform real time strategy game with abstract visuals. It manages to be simple and elegant even as it combines elements such as the emergence of life, a Darwinian “sperm wars” motif, and intra-species competition with your standard world-domination game concept.

TaggedFrog is a free utility that allows you to tag any files on your hard disk by keyword and access or filter them through a tag cloud. Users can also create filters by file-type to filter their results, and create favorite “sets” or combinations of tags for quick browsing.

If you are interested in some very cool short animated films check out the Film Page on the University of Hertforshire’s digital animation program (also check out their page on Vimeo). These films are made by students as graduation projects and are really very impressive.

this page, set up by Japanese TV station Wowow offers an interactive experience of a live Radiohead performance of their track “15 Step” during the group’s 2008 Japanese tour. It allows you to remix the video in real time using pixellized flash video streams captured from 12 different points-of-view, and to generate your own custom mix of the live performance.

Taksi is a free video/screen recording tool that can capture 3D graphics applications such as games. It will record any Windows application that uses DirectX 8, DirectX 9, OpenGL or GDI and create an AVI file using any type of codecs that are installed on your system (or capture frames to PNG/BMP). Audio capture is not yet implemented.

A reader sent an email to ask about a list of “ten must-have” free programs that I would recommend that everyone immediately download and install on their computers, and this is one I have come up with. These 10 are to be the first installment (part 1), with additional “must have” freeware program lists to be amended to this one. Check this list out, download and install – these programs are solid gold.

WindowsPager is a free program that adds four virtual desktops/workspaces to your desktop. It integrates the new workspaces as icons in your taskbar and allows for managing your open windows through the right click context menu. WindowsPager is a portable app with very light resource consumption.

“I made this. You play this. We are enemies” is a free flash platform game where the objective is to navigate a ball across different maze-like levels. It is the sequel to a previously mentioned game called “Game, game, game and again game“. Like it’s predecessor, “I made this” is not just a game but an artistic vehicle, an exercise in creative expression that uses the gaming format as its medium.

Open++ is a free program that allows you to install functions in the Windows’ context menu extension. You can choose from a number of built-in functions or otherwise use any command line executable to add custom commands that can work on folders, specific file type(s) or both.