Protect yourself with QR Codes
After a new topic came up on the AGP Forums (See it here) by Eric I had responded to the topic and Herne thought it was a great idea.
So I thought I’d share the idea in a post.
What I had explained in the forum was that QR Codes are great to add to your digital media as a means of copyright.
This method works on anything visual, images, video and even webpages.
QR Codes have been traditionally an easy way for people with mobile devices like digital cameras and cell phones to take a picture of the code and then be directed to a URL, create an SMS for competitions or to encode text like coupon codes.
And it here is where the idea starts, by embedding your URL or some copyright text into a QR Code you can then add that to an image, or to the footer / sidebar of your blog to enforce your copyright on that item.
Although QR Codes seem complex, and they can be, to generate a code couldn’t be simpler with a couple of really good websites based around their generation.
http://invx.com has a simple interface, all you need to do is enter in some text to the text box and hit generate, the site will then generate a QR Code and a Datamatrix code (Datamatrix are similar to QR Codes). invix.com is great if you want to create a code to print up or post somewhere for people to snap and get your info.
http://winksite.com has an offering that is a little more advanced though, it allows you to specifiy the type of data encoded either URL, SMS, Phone number or Text. It also gives you a choice of sizes to use, which is much better for images to create something small to place in a corner. It is a bit of a hassle getting to the generator so here is a quick link: Winksite QR Code Generator
Here is an example of one way you can implement it into your images:
If anyone else has some good ideas about how to secure your copyright on your digital media then leave a comment!
"I Want To Be a Celebrity"
Buy at 
I think it’s a neat idea. I wonder how small you can make it and yet still be able to decode it? I also wonder if it has to be just black and white or if you can use any two contrasty colours to generate it.
That looks like a really good idea. Do they have to be black and white, or can you make them a bit more subtle and choose contrasting colours to match the image more or even blend them in as a watermark?
The Winksite one can create images that are 33px x 33px, as long as the image is clear enough for a camera to capture (or to sample from an image on your pc) then it will work.
@Tom You can have them other colours if you wish, but not as a watermark, I’d also suggest that yellow wouldn’t give enough contrast for a reader.
“Copyright 2007. Tim”
The “Barcode” App on my E71 is great.
I wonder if you wrote “20% coupon at [some retailer]” above the code…. How well would the update be outside of Asia.
I had mistakenly thought QR was a disaster based on experience a few years ago. Seems this can get really interesting.
Thanks Tim!
Glad I suggested this to an Asian Advertising group!
j/k
I’m a simple mobile junkie.
I went to an event in SF via a bCODE invitation Nov 2007 and a lot of the non-geeks in line where pretty confused.
I tried delivr.com and a firefox extension for generating the codes and it went rather well.
@Eric - Surprisingly I’ve seen QR Codes all over the place, even in the supermarkets on DVD Cardboard stand-ups selling DVD’s, usually they are to the movie url, but these things could be fantastic for coupons or other info.
The other thing I’ve seen similar codes (datamatrix) on is Intralot scratch tickets that you buy to win cash, you know the old match 3 of these and you win the dollar prize indicated.
Even Nokia are getting into the game, one of their lower priced handsets was being advertised as having a central usage of QR and Datamatrix codes.
@Eric - Do you have the name of the FF Extension? I’d love to give it a try!
I’ve only seen these used for inventory control and couriers like FedEx… but then, as I keep saying, I don’t own a cell phone so I wouldn’t even think to look for them elsewhere.
This is the smallest I could generate… readable?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/theherne/3090618835/
I forgot to mention the QR FF extension is sorta like how I used laterloop.
I can just put my mouse over it and snap it with the E71
Mobile Barcoder 0.2.0
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2780
Just saw this as well.
http://mobilecodes.nokia.com/
A shirt? Man I want that!
Hrm… the decoder site I tried wouldn’t read the 33 x 33 pixel image, but it would read the 66 x 66 pixel image. Unfortunately it only works with bitmaps and it appears to scale the image which could be why it can’t read the smaller one.
http://intelcomcorp.com/products/QR_Code.html
Any other online decoders out there?
Very interesting to use QR Codes in regards to copyright on images!
For generating Codes, managing them and printing them on shirts etc you should check out http://www.snappr.net
There is also an API for creation/decoding, so you could include 2D Barcode decoding into your own application -> http://www.snappr.net/api.php
Also check out some youtube footage on reading QR Codes and creating QR Codes
hope you like it!
- james
Hi Guys,
Great to see some dialog happening in Australia about QR codes.
You might like to check out some of my posts on QR codes here http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/search?q=qr
To answer your question about size, the less information you have the smaller the qr code itself can be. If you want you can use url redirection to minimise the code length or action.
To answer your questions, yes you can have qr codes in alternative colours other than black and white. In fact you can actually embed logo’s into the codes themselves (uses the error correction to correct the missing information).
You might also want to check out http://www.Delivr.com - its a new service from the same guys who developed Winksite, think of it as a multichannel enablement tool, eg Tiny Url on steriods but with really neat analytics and sms functionality.
Cheers
Dean
Tim, you know of any iPhone app to read QR’s?
The other thing is that it is a bit of a bummer that the QR is so obvious - be good to do something like embed them in such a way to make them less obvious or change their shape.
Cool post though
There are a selection of QR code readers at http://www.qrme.co.uk/qr-code-resources/qr-code-readers.html.
The site also has news, videos, forum and a social network dedicated to QR codes.
There is also a free QR code tracking service that will show you where and when your QR code was scanned using Goolge maps and it’s realtime.
Regards
Ian
Admin - QRMe
@ Dave a QR code reader for the iPhone / iPod touch is “barcode”. Look for QR code in the app store. It’s free!
How about fellow aussie company? http://insqribe.com
Create, Manage and track QR codes
Danny
Does anyone know of anything similar to this, but for audio?