Update 5/3/2011: The fix (version 2.1) has been published to the market place. You should be able to start downloading it whenever your country's marketplace refreshes.

Well, it had to happen, eventually. There is a major bug in Version 2.0 of Stripes that is affecting users that upgrade from a previous version. Because some internal data structures have changed, when the old application state is pulled into the new application, items are missing and the application can crash when searching for a barcode.

The latest version of Stripes (2.0) brings the following changes:

The good news is that the next version of Windows Phone (“Mango” is the code name) will allow developers to embed the camera in their application. That means, Stripes will have “live scanning” capabilities! Microsoft says we can expect this update in the fall of 2011.

Version 1.4 was just released to the Marketplace. It brings the following updates:

As always, bug reports and image detection problem reports are welcome. Please comment here or use the "Contact" link in the menu.

I uploaded the latest version of Stripes (1.3) to the Marketplace last night. This version brings a few improvements, including:

Right now, I am constrained by the very limited camera API on all Windows Phone devices. Microsoft has promised regular updates to the platform and I am hopefull that direct camera access will become available in a future release. However, until then, a "live" barcode scanner (one in which the video from the camera is examined until a barcode is found) is impossible. Also, there is no way to modify the camera settings or save them for future use, either. Believe me when I say I am anxiously awaiting an update to this particular API. Are you listening, Microsoft?