In case you’ve somehow missed it, Photo Stream in iOS5 is quite a game changer. Once you’ve upgraded all your devices, whenever you take a photo on one, it auto-magically syncs to all the others. Let’s say you are projecting a presentation with Air Sketch and want to quickly add a photo of something in the room. You can take a photo with your iPhone, tap on the insert photo button,  open the Photo Stream album, and your photo will appear after a few seconds. Instant new feature that would have been pretty hard to do before. No wires, no new hardware needed, no mess. Apple really did a great job with Photo Stream, and we’ve found that it does indeed work as advertised.

Note that it does take a few seconds to a minute for the photos to sync, depending on your network connection. If you are doing this in a live presentation, it would be a good idea to take the photo first, finish your current slide, then try to add it.

Works with iPhoto too:

Bonus tip: It seems that the latest version of iPhoto ‘11 also automatically synchs newly imported photos to Photo Stream. We found that if you drag a photo from the Finder and add it to iPhoto, it will appear in Photo Stream shortly. However, it seems that the Photo Stream is sorted by the File date, not the added date, so older files may appear at the beginning of the Photo Stream album, not the end as you would expect.

We’re pleased to announce that Air Projector Free has just gone live in the App Store, our little holiday gift to you and your friends. This app lets you project your recent photos from your iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad to a browser on any computer on the same network.

Just fire up Air Projector Free and type in the displayed URL in your web browser. Then flip through the photos on your iPhone and the remote display updates automatically. Hook up your laptop to your TV to show off your latest photos to your friends and family on the big screen.

If you like Air Projector Free, also check out the Full Version, which also allows you to:

• Project PDF files and photo libraries
• Use a virtual laser pointer
• And more!

Happy holidays from everyone at Qrayon!

Link: Air Projector Free in the App Store

Update 10/1: Air Projector 1.5 has been released which fixes this issue.

A couple days ago, we discovered that certain devices with the latest iOS4.1 update and Air Projector v1.2 had problems accessing the Photo Library. We have decided to temporarily suspend Air Projector from the App Store while we investigate further. We hope to have it back online by later next week.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused. :( We want to make sure our users have the best experience when downloading our Apps.

Right now, it appears that this problem only affects certain devices. If you already have Air Projector installed and notice a problem accessing the Photo Library, please let us know, and include the model of device and OS version you have installed.

Thanks for your understanding, and we appreciate your help.

Update 10/1: This issue has been fixed in Air Projector 1.5

It turns out that there was a last minute API change in iOS 4.1, where the Camera Roll (default) album would not without a change to our code (which worked for iOS4.0). With the fix in v1.5, the Camera Roll album now appears on iOS 4.1, though you may see it appear twice on iOS4.0. We expect that most people will want to upgrade (if they haven’t already) to iOS4.1.

Thanks to everyone who helped us track down this issue!

As part of the Air Projector launch event, we are pleased to announce a giveaway program for our loyal fans! Air Projector is scheduled to be released to the public in early September, but you can get a free download code for it today. Just do either of the following:

1. Follow us on Twitter and tweet “@qrayon Air Projector for #iPhone pre-release giveaway!”

2. OR, drop us a short note on our feedback form and tell us how you might find Air Projector useful.

Over the next 5 days, we’ll randomly pick one winner per day and send you a free download code, so the earlier you enter the more chances you will have to win! Only one entry per person. The giveaways end September 1st.

If you win, we would really appreciate your feedback on the product, feel free to let us know what you liked and didn’t like about it via our feedback form.

Please note that Air Projector requires iOS4, which currently isn’t available for the iPad.

Please tell your friends about Air Projector.

Thank you and good luck!

It has been quite a summer! While we have been hard at work releasing major updates for Air Sketch and Stickyboard, we have also been busy working on our next “secret project”. Well, the secret’s now out of the bag, and today, I’m happy to be able to share with you what we’ve been hard at work on.

Announcing Air Projector: Project PDFs and photos directly from your iPhone to a local browser over WiFi.

When we released Air Sketch, we were overwhelmed by the positive response we received from our users (thank you!), as well as feedback on where you would like to see us go next. One direction was to do an iPhone version of Air Sketch, so that you could take it with you wherever you go. We thought long and hard about this, and even worked on several prototypes. In the end however, we found that sketching on a screen as small as the iPhone would not be an optimal experience. We chose to focus on what would make an iPhone version really great instead – as a slideshow presenter.

There have been several apps that let you use your iPhone as a remote control for PowerPoint, Keynote, and other desktop apps. However, we realized that we could make the iPhone serve up the presentation content itself and use it as the ultimate presentation clicker. The wireless approach used in Air Sketch would be ideal for this as well, since no one wants a long heavy VGA cable attached to their iPhone.

We also had to completely rethink how the interface would work. One of the Apps that works exceptionally well on the iPhone is the Photo app. It feels completely intuitive to navigate even a large collection of photos by tapping and swiping. We realized that this would be a great model to follow.

We designed Air Projector to look almost identical to the Photos app. Navigating albums and photos works in exactly the same way. The major difference is that whatever photo you are looking at is also simultaneously projected to a web browser.

Air Projector projects images via WiFi from your iPhone or iPod Touch to a browser connected on the same local network. No additional client software is required. To use it, you just need to fire up Air Projector on your iPhone and type in the displayed URL in your web browser. Images show up as you navigate them on your iPhone.

We also added the ability to project PDF documents in the same way. Air Projector does not store PDFs directly. To project a PDF document, send it from the Mail App, or a third party document manager such as Dropbox, to Air Projector. This works great with exported PDFs from PowerPoint or Keynote (note: transitions and animations are not stored in PDFs). BTW, we wholeheartedly recommend checking out Dropbox if you haven’t already. They have an excellent service and their iPhone client works great with Air Projector. They are also currently offering a free 2GB subscription.

Coming soon to the App Store

Air Projector will be available for the iPhone and iPod Touch running iOS4. It is currently in final Beta and is scheduled to be available in the App Store in early September 2010.

We hope that you will find Air Projector a useful addition to your iPhone’s capabilities. We plan to have a special introductory pricing at launch time, so please subscribe to our twitter feed to be the first to hear about the launch. Also check out the Air Projector homepage for more details.

If you are a writer, and would like an advance copy of Air Projector to review for an article, please drop us a line and we’ll try our best to accommodate you.