Non-Markovian quantum dynamics and memory effects have recently attracted quite a large amount of attention both from fundamental and applicative perspective. We begin by recalling the concept of nonlocal memory effects and show how this can be used to perform efficient teleportation with mixed states and to protect a polarization entangled photon pair against decoherence when distributed in optical fibers. From a more fundamental point of view, we discuss the universality of quantum memory effects and conclude by presenting some schemes for discrete non-Markovian quantum walks implemented with photons and how memory effects allow almost ideal superdense coding in the presence of noise.