QR codes for your rare artifacts?

[RadioHist]

Folks,

FYI - I've been working on an article and PowerPoint presentation on the subject of tracking/tagging important communications artifacts. All too often we see artifacts without any identification materials or anyone around to help you understand the significance of an item.

In the age of smartphones with cameras, it is easy to access potentially vast amounts of information about tagged items in a matter of seconds by scanning a QR code.

As it turns out, I have discovered that there is a way to do this tagging with very little effort. I have prepared a draft article on the subject that I hope to get printed in a number of publications. I've also prepared a PowerPoint presentation that walks you through the process of generating the tags.

You can download updated drafts (5 July 2017) of both documents in .PDF format by going to this web page: http://kd4hsh.homestead.com/qr-tags-tutorial.html

Comments welcome...

Robert

[The Philpott]

That's a brilliant idea. I should imagine potentially there's a lot of work involved.

Anything that gets younger people involved with older stuff is helpful

[RadioHist]

Hi,

In the case where you reference existing Web pages the effort to tag an item with useful information is virtually nothing.

Not a lot of folks are engaged in exhibiting their vintage communications artifacts in a way that educates, no wonder interest in collecting and cultivating an interest in its history is dying. (As far as I can tell.)

Robert

[Maarten]

Linking to radiomuseum.org would be a somewhat feasible way to include information, as those urls probably still exist in a few years time (they have something of a plan for continuity and preservation) but are never guaranteed to give the same information at any point in time. Linking to your own site is good enough as long as you are still exhibiting your stuff (presumably you are then still alive and know whether you changed any urls). Linking to most other third parties is virtually worthless as there is no guarantee a document will be online at any given moment in time.

How about a google (or just a plain search using the scanners favourite one) search for the item? (can that be done from a Q code?) At least the proper name/description would be there. The internet is so flimsy.

[RadioHist]

Yes having static URLs that persist is problematical for anything other than institutions like museums and government agencies. I have yet to wrap my head around the concept of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. It might be a possibility.

A quick test shows that you could indeed have a QR code that would be a Google search criteria. Thanks... I had not thought of that.

Robert

[bobskie]

That's a great idea! It could be used for more than just radio stuff perhaps telling stories of the objects origin. Of course it all relies upon websites staying up and the internet is like a beach, constantly changing. Chances are the links will go dead or even become obsolete eventually if a new system is put in place. No point thinking about it too much though any attempt at providing information is worth it.

[MrBungle]

Usually when you have a QR code, you have it pointing at a short proxy URL i.e. http://yoursite.io/1231231 ... this then redirects to a suitable target that maps the value 1231231 to another URL. That allows you to control the target once you've printed the QR codes. Last thing you want is the actual link embedded in the code as it's a lot more expensive to go around and change all the codes than the redirect above.

Also if you don't control the target of the QR code, and the target is a nefarious individual who doesn't like people linking directly from QR codes then they can redirect you to a shock site or something. This happened to a marketing agency a couple of years ago. They printed thousands of campaign leaflets with a typo in the QR code URL, someone registered the real domain and then redirected it to goatse (do not ever even consider googling that - one of my life's biggest regrets)

[bobskie]

I didn't realise this but that makes sense, as long as the website the redirects were hosted on stayed up that would work. Bad mistake with the campaign leaflets!

[RadioHist]

I'm sure we can all agree that a QR code cannot be a true panacea for every situation. It is good to see these caveats to help one determine an approach that best fits. For my exhibition of items from my collection, permanence in terms of years (or until I croak) is good enough for now. Being a pensioner I'm not inclined to subscribe to a service that provides forwarding or URL shortening services, etc. I've addressed the possibilities of this tool (in earnest) for only a few weeks. No doubt there can be refinements... So additional comments are welcome anytime.

Three more examples of content..

Robert

[ColinB]

Sorry, I'm a bit behind on these codes; how does one use them with a phone? Android in my case...

[julie_m]

You need to download a QR code app if you haven't got one already. ZXing Barcode Scanner is about as good as any. Then you get the code within the camera's field of view and as soon as it is recognised, you will be prompted for what you want to do with it -- if it looks like a syntactically-correct URL, then one of the options will be to visit that website.

[ex seismic]

At the risk of going OT, why does ZXing need access to my contacts? I didn't install it because of that.

Gordon

[ColinB]

Thanks julie_m, that makes sense.

[julie_m]

Originally Posted by ex seismic

At the risk of going OT, why does ZXing need access to my contacts?

A QR code could contain VCard data, representing a person or place to be added to your contacts. It therefore needs access to your contacts, in order to store new contacts from the QR codes it reads.

If in doubt, always choose an app whose Source Code is available for inspection.

[MrBungle]

ZXing is what Google use for configuring 2FA on google authenticator as well which is a fairly good recommendation

[julie_m]

In the worst case, that would mean only Google could spy on you -- and they absolutely would be very careful not to let whatever they were syphoning off from you leak. And they even have all your contacts' details already anyway, when you sync your phone with your account.