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A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to ReadWriteWeb this afternoon that the Consumer Preview phase of Windows 8 testing is slated to begin on Wednesday, February 29, with a gala rollout event in Barcelona. That's to coincide - for the first time - with Mobile World Congress, which has not generally been known as the kind of affair where a PC operating system is the headliner.

The venue may definitely steal some of the thunder from Google Chairman Eric Schmidt's keynote, which remains set for the day before.

This morning, everyone is looking agog at the words of Google Europe boss John Herlihy, who's quoted in the Silicon Republic predicting the demise of the desktop computer.

"In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs," Herlihy said. Is this proclamation taking it one step too far or will we be keyboard-less and fancy free by the time 2013 rolls around?

Swedish software and design company The Astonishing Tribe, also known as TAT, has been developing a rather astonishing augmented reality application for mobile phones. Originally built as a software concept, the Android app called "Recongnizr" is a mobile prototype that allows you to use your phone in order to "see" who a person is and what web services and social networks they're connected to. App users can also associate traditional address book details with their profile like their full name, address, phone number and email, for example.

The big news of the week came out of the annual Mobile World Congress, from companies such as Adobe, Facebook, Google and Skype - read on for our extensive coverage and analysis. We also continued our exploration of the significant Internet trends of 2010, including Real-Time Web, Mobile Web and Augmented Reality.

You may've noticed that we've refreshed the format for our longest running feature, the Weekly Wrapup. It now focuses more explicitly on the key trends that ReadWriteWeb is tracking in 2010, as well as giving you the highlights from the leading story of the week. Let us know your thoughts on the new format.