Curious about what's happening with Microsoft's Windows 8? You might want to check out the company's new blog, Building Windows 8, to follow the development of the new operating system.

Windows President Steven Sinofsky posted the first entry on the blog on Monday evening. "We intend to post regularly throughout the development of Windows 8, and to focus on the engineering of the product," the post read. "Blogging allows us to have a two-way dialogue with you about design choices, real-world data and usage, and new opportunities that are part of Windows 8."

TechRadar predicts that Windows 8 may be ready by autumn 2012.

Microsoft first gave developers and users a sneak peek at Windows 8 in June at the D9 Conference. The company said Windows 8 was developed to provide a unified operating system for both tablets and PCs, and it will work without a keyboard and mouse on different platforms.

The blog will allow Microsoft to release information to developers and users much as it did with the company's blog for Windows 7. The Windows 8 blog also allows readers to submit feedback as new details about the operating system come out.

In his blog post, Sinofsky assured Windows users Windows 8 will be backwards compatible with the copies of Windows 7 already available worldwide. "It is also important to know that we're 100 percent committed to running the software and supporting the hardware that is compatible with over 400 million Windows 7 licenses already sold and all the Windows 7 yet to be sold," Sinofsky wrote.