Photos

There are several ways to view content from the iOS Photos app on a larger screen. Many iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users are familiar with Apple TV, which uses the built-in AirPlay feature of iOS. Chromecast owners can get in on the action, too. All that's needed is a free, third-party iOS app named Photo Cast.

With Photo Cast installed, video from Albums or the iOS Camera Roll can be streamed to the Chromecast device on your TV at up to HD 720p resolution. 1080p resolution is possible with a $2.99 upgrade to Photo Cast PLUS. Custom photo slideshows with a soundtrack can also be cast, or just swipe through some Camera Roll photos on the TV.

Apple's overhauled Photos application that debuted with iOS 7 earlier this year introduced automatic photo sorting by date and location. A new patent application that surfaced at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday suggests that Apple wants to improve upon this idea by allowing users to tag photos and search for them using Siri.

The patent, entitled "Voice-Based Image Tagging and Searching," describes how the idea works in its abstract: "The electronic device provides a natural language text string corresponding to a speech input associated with the digital photograph. The electronic device performs natural language processing on the text string to identify one or more terms associated with an entity, an activity, or a location. The electronic device tags the digital photograph with the one or more terms and their associated entity, activity, or location." That is basically a long-winded way of saying that you

Engadget got an early preview of the Impossible Instant Lab at Photokina, which is taking place right now in Cologne, Germany. The folks behind the Impossible Project have raised over $400,000 via Kickstarter to manufacture their instant photo lab for the iPhone. According to the Kickstarter page, the Impossible Project crew "were crazy enough to buy the last Polaroid factory in order to save instant film for the future." They then set out to find a way to turn digital iPhone images into "true instant photos," and the Impossible Instant Lab was born!

The Impossible Instant Lab is easy to use, you just take a picture using the Impossible app, extend the tower connected to Impossible Lab base, place the iPhone on the tray and the iPhone flash will let you know when the process is finished. The Impossible Instant Lab uses its built-in lens and light from the iPhone screen to expose an image from the iPhone onto film, which is then spit out by the rollers on the bottom.

Did you know that when you email a photo from the camera roll on your iPhone, the resolution of the picture is automatically degraded to 800x600? This makes sense if you don't need to send anything at a higher quality resolution.

But what if you need to send the full resolution photo? The original iPhone and iPhone 3G both take photos at 1600x1200 resolution. The iPhone 3GS with its auto-focus camera takes photos at 2048x1536 resolution.