Microsoft looks to extend its Fresh Paint app for Windows Blue, Phone

Stephen Chapman of Microsoft Kitchen fame unearthed an interesting Microsoft job post that offers insights on what Microsoft may be planning next around its natural-user-interface (NUI) "creative" apps.

According to the post for a job that's in Microsoft's Startup Business Group, Microsoft seems to be planning to enhance its Fresh Paint application so that it will run on Windows Blue, as well as Windows Phone 8 -- which the job post refers to as Windows Mobile 8. (Someone didn't get that Windows Phone rebranding memo from a few years ago, I guess.)

More interestingly, according to the post, the Fresh Paint team is planning to make use of the physics engine that currently is built into Fresh Paint to build a "family of creative apps from sketching and journaling to 3D experiences like clay and pottery."

The self-described "small" team is "productizing ideas and code from Microsoft Research, designing APIs (application programming interfaces), and developing new experiences using physics simulations," the post said.

There's no timing mentioned in the post as to when the updated Fresh Paint and/or related creative apps will come to market. But Windows Blue is supposedly coming to market late this summer and will be optimized to run on smaller screen sizes. Windows Phone Blue is expected to follow some time after that, though possibly not until early 2014. One of the alleged goals of Blue is to bring the developer platforms of Windows and Windows Phone closer together to allow developers to make fewer modifications in writing apps that will work on both platforms.

Fresh Paint is a free, Microsoft-developed application that works on both Windows 8 and Windows RT. It allows users to create simulated oil paintings. Fresh Paint is one of the most downloaded Windows 8/Windows RT apps and is featured in a number of Microsoft's Windows 8 ads.