We’re packing away our Euros and getting out our Czech Crowns (“Korunas?”) and going to find out how the mobile industry is getting on across the city.

We’ll most definitely be popping into the mobile shops there and taking a look around. We’ll be casting an eye across the population to see how many are texting, taking photos and talking on their devices (and, indeed, what type of device they are using).

We’re bringing the big HD camera — and, POSSIBLY the tripod — although I’m giving a lot of thought to traveling light and leaving it at the office. We’re also bringing our two Sanyo Xacti HD genius cameras.

It looks like we’ll have a few interviews lined up by the time we arrive. If you can recommend a mobile company or person that you think we should meet with, drop me a note or get me on Twitter.

By the way: The MIR Show Rome (filmed in January) is on the editing floor at the moment and will shortly be heading on to the site after our Mobile World Congress footage.

Bring on Prague. Can’t wait!

The first question we asked? What was your first ever mobile handset.

The last question we asked? What was the first album you ever bought.

Oh yes. Niklas proved to be a fun, engaging chap. Ben did the interview whilst Dan took supplementary footage and I pointed the camera.

Grab a coffee — it’s a short video, just 9:58 minutes long — and enjoy:

Thanks for taking the time to sit down with us, Niklas!

You can read more about Niklas on his Nokia profile here.

Go and get a coffee and sit back and watch this one. Dan and James introduce the Microvision Mobile Projector. It’s just stunning and you will want one…

Here’s the video:

Annnd then we let Dan loose.

With a hammer.

And his HUGE boots.

First, you’ll see him stepping and jumping on the Sonim XP3 packaging. Rumour has it, the material might even stop a bullet, although we didn’t get that verified. That in itself is worth a purchase.

Then Dan couldn’t keep his hands off that hammer. WHACK. WHACK. WHACK.

And then Dan spotted James walking along the corridor towards us. And promptly threw the phone at him. Then down the stairs. Then stamped on it and threw it down the stairs.

And then engaged the bystanders (a bit of a crowd had formed) and asked them to stamp on it. And… You know what, get a coffee, sit down and watch this…

Playing with the Sonim XP3 (1 of 2) from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

And the second vid? Right here:

Playing with the Sonim XP3 (2 of 2) from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

Palm Pre reactions from the MIR Show team from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

Palm Pre hands-on overview (2 of 2) from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

Meantime… enjoy:

Palm Pre hands-on overview (1 of 2) from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

Here’s the video:

Palm Pre – Our thoughts before seeing the Palm from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

Here’s the video:

The Microvision Mobile Projector from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

Here’s the video:

Quick Chat with Jeb Brilliant from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

He’s setup a new venture called Mobile Facts and although he was unwilling to tell me too much, the hints and examples that he gave lead me to deduce that it could be a rather smart service offering. I’d expect nothing less of Matthaus. Keep an eye on www.mobile-facts.com.

I filmed a quick interview with Matthaus and asked him all about the conference, about Android, about the industry and so on.

At one point he does use some strong language. Very strong. The F word. But he was using it as a direct quote from a venture capitalist so we’ve left that in the final edit.

Here’s the video:

Opinion from Matthaus from Mobile Facts [Strong Language] from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

This was particularly relevant to me since I’ve spent most of the week running out of Blackberry battery power at about 2pm much to my *intense* annoyance.

Have a look at this development coming to mobile handsets. Here’s the video:

Techtium Demonstrate Their Mobile Power Products from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

The chaps behind it are from Techtium. I can’t wait to get something like this. The flexibility of having TWO power supplies is fantastic. You can rely on your main battery — supplementing when/if you need to with any AAA you can find at any corner shop. Genius when you’re roaming.

Here’s the video:

Nokia N86 8MP Launch – Initial Opinion from Rafe Blandford from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

MIR MWC: James Whatley Introduces the SpinVox Stand from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

Ben Smith and Rafe Blandford DISAGREE on Nokia Maps from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

MIR Show – Rafe Blandford speaks from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

MIR Show – James gets his MIR Jacket from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

MIR MWC – John Strand from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

We took a brief tour of the Nokia stand on Day One. We’ve kept it highly brief because of the announcements they’ve got coming. We’ll be back and we’ll film it all.

Here’s the video:

MIR MWC – The Nokia Stand from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

This gist of the feedback has been words to the effect of ‘Rome: Great’ (we’ve just published the preview video of our trip to Italy over the weekend) but what about somewhere REALLY interesting.

Ant commented thus:

As for next MIR city… hmm Kabul perhaps? There’s quite a few interesting mobile stories there to uncover!

I bet there is.

Well, I know there is.

There’s a mobile operator out there in Kabul that we’ve written about now and again. Indeed we even tried to send some flowers (and old feature we used to do every Monday) to John Hadl, founder & CEO of Afghanistan Mobile to say job-well-done.

The last we wrote about Afghanistan, we were telling the planet about the two major networks there hitting 4 million subscribers. This from a country widely assumed by most consumers in the West to have next to no infrastructure to mention.

I’d love to go to Kabul and see what’s going on with their mobile marketplace. Nowadays more than ever — in this uber-connected worldwide society — the ability to remain connected, whether for safety, commerce or family — is becoming more and more important. Witness, for example, the explosion of handsets and associated innovative services across Africa.

Kabul would need a lot of money. Not least to cover the daily fees of 6x Blackwater Worldwide former SAS paratroopers to help keep us — literally — in one piece in order to be able to bring you some coverage.

I suspect the Foreign Office here in Britain would think us off-our-heads. And I doubt the Afghanistan Tourist Board — if there is such an organisation — would be that impressed to hear from us. I think we’d be a little bit of a distraction.

The Foreign Office doesn’t specifically say it’s a crazy idea:

# We strongly advise against all travel to the Sarobi District of the Kabul province.
# We strongly advise against all but essential travel to Kabul.

Doable?

Perhaps Afghanistan is a little bit too far. It’s all too easy to live this cosseted life from the reasonably peaceful United Kingdom where the biggest threat today is slipping in the snow. Perhaps we should stick to what we sort-of know.

I am keen on a visit to Tehran, capital of Iran. Again, I don’t quite think their tourist board — or Foreign Office — would be that impressed either.

Likewise, the North Korean authorities.

You never know. I think there would be spectacular consumer mobile stories to capture in these countries. *Specatcular*.

What’s your opinion?

The biggest barrier to us is the actual cost of arranging, getting and staying. Right now we don’t have any companies supporting our MIR Show coverage — it’s me that’s paying for it all — and hiring a few SAS types on £2,500 a day would begin to put a real dent in the MIR finances.

Plus, you can’t exactly book a trip to Kabul on Expedia.

Or can you?

Let’s have a look.

No, you can’t:

Drop me an email if you’d like to help send us to Kabul

We’ve had a lot of people asking how the filming went — very well indeed thank you — so I thought it might be nice to post up a quick preview.

I’ve picked out a few scenes and stuck them together to give you an idea of what to expect when the fully produced shows are published shortly.

Here we go:

MIR Show: Roma Edition — Preview from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

It’s subject to change, but I’ve been getting lots of enquiries from people wondering where we’re headed so I thought I’d post a note up now:

- February: Marrakech
- March: Prague
- April: Reykjavik
- May: Copenhagen
- June: Berlin
- July: Helsinki

I can’t wait…

Instead of bringing you updates, perspective and on-the-road tests from somewhere in London, we decided to take the MIR Show on the road. The first stop, of course, was Rome.

We flew out on the 730am British Airways flight to Rome and arrived on schedule at Leonardo da Vinci airport. We hit the hotel, dumped most of the non-essential kit and headed off to the Colosseum to begin the filming.

We used both Google Maps and Nokia Maps to get about the place. Central Rome is mostly walkable. The massive FAIL that is Nokia Maps (I thought it would be at least ‘ok’) came as a complete surprise.

Also, the G1 handset roamed perfectly… except for Google Maps — which spent the day displaying an error to an increasingly frustrated Ben Smith. (Ben was also trying to demonstrate Nokia Maps).

Dan Lane decided to stick with his iPhone 3G. Lucky he did. We were able to navigate around Rome thanks to Google Maps and the iPhone.

I really thought the Italians would be ultra hip — both in their fashion sense and their handset selection. Instead most of the locals around Rome were wearing relaxed garb. And when they weren’t kissing each other passionately (it is, yes, a very romantic place), they were talking on their Motorola RAZRs.

This, I think, is one of the biggest misconceptions I had about Italians and their mobile handsets: I thought they’d be up to date. I thought they’d be big into data. I thought there would be handsets all over the place. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

The best handsets we saw in use? Seriously: Motorola RAZRs. Or the odd three year old Sony Ericcson.

Once or twice I saw an iPhone — and then realised it belonged to someone from the UK.

This, despite the fact that Vodafone Italy retails both the Blackberry Storm AND the iPhone 3G.

Perhaps Saturday and Sunday were the wrong days to go and do some normob watching in the capital city? Maybe most people were out in the provinces, leaving the city centre to the proles on their RAZRs?

I wonder if Italians really DO care more about talking? Rather than texting and twittering? From what we observed over the weekend I’d say that looks to be the case. The city locals were very clearly carrying about MOBILE TELEPHONES — RAZRs and ultra slim 2-3 year old Sony Ericssons and using them to talk on. The only folk using data services on their handsets appeared to be us.

Anyway we filmed a lot of content and all things being equal, we’ll be publishing two MIR Shows from Italy soon.

Fancy a few pics meantime?

Here’s Dan on the phone to his other half, reveling in the fact that his 3-Like-Home service didn’t cost him anything extra to phone home from Rome:

Here’s Ben Smith getting more and more agitated by his N82 with Nokia Maps. Dan had already plotted the location to the Spanish Steps within 10 seconds whilst we waited for the Nokia to get on the same page:

We did some filming at most of the major landmarks. This one is Il Vittoriano:

Next stop? I’m thinking Prague. Or Marrakech.

Starting this Saturday with Rome, Italy.

The model for each destination on the MIR Show schedule is simple:

1. We’re taking the crew — that is Dan Lane, Ben Smith and James Whatley — to do some on-location filming.

2. We’ll produce two MIR Shows from the city, so that every Monday fortnight on-going, we’ll bring you some fairly decent informed entertainment.

3. The Shows will most certainly include ‘Ben’s Facts’ — a real favourite amongst regular viewers, this time expanded to give you a perspective on the destination.

4. We’ll be contacting local MIR readers and shining the light on the mobile activities of their companies and discovering how they ‘mobile’.

5. We’re going to try doing a normob walk-about (that is, shove the camera in the faces of unsuspecting yet English-speaking locals and demand to see what phone they’re using). That might need a bit of work. But James Whatley, purveyor of normob-walkabouts for MIR, is well up for it.

6. The roaming and equipment dilemmas are going to be priceless. Italy, of course, is covered by 3′s 3-Like-Home deal whereby if you’re a UK customer, you can roam free on their sister Italian network and use your minutes like you would at home (and data, too). But when we’re off elsewhere… well, that’s going to be interesting.

8. We’ll do the filming during Saturday and in the evening, we’ll be hosting a relaxed meetup for anyone who’s interested in the evening, along with, I suspect a bit of proper Italian pizza.

9. We aim to fly early on Saturday morning — and back into London on Sunday morning. So a literal flying visit for each city.

This Saturday, I’m joined by Dan Lane and Ben Smith. (James Whatley unfortunately had a schedule conflict for this one, but we’ve got him for the rest).

Rome Recommendations
We’d like to try a bit of crowd-sourcing rather than turning up in Rome and finding the nearest rubbish tourist restaurant. Thus we’re looking for recommendations on the following:

* Your suggestions for where we should film [Backgrounds to where we hold conversations about news and so on.]
* Restaurants for lunch
* Bars & restaurants for dinner
* Things we should do and see
* Stuff you’d like us to capture on film
* People & companies you recommend we hook up with
* Mobile related services you think we should check out — either IN Rome or services/hardware you’d like us to test while we’re there

If you’ve got any ideas, either mail me or comment below.

All things being equal, look-out for the first MIR Show from Rome this coming Monday.

(Colosseum image via Wikipedia).

Watch out for the quote I Tweeted earlier today from Dan — “SMS is the Google of mobile” — used in the context of discussing how successful Google has been as a marketing medium online. It’s a good discussion — particularly if you’re interested in the ‘big business’ viewpoint of mobile marketing as AKQA are right there in the forefront.

Enjoy!

MIR Show – jMac takeover – Dan Rosen of AKQA Mobile from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.