Sony Ericsson is taking the viral route on marketing with its forthcoming Xperia X1, launching a new "alternative reality thriller" centered around a mysterious character named Johnny X. There's not much meat in the video the company is desperately trying to sneak into your daily YouTube diet, but at least we get to see action-packed chases, Memento-stealing plot points of the highest order, and one weird, seemingly backmasked utterance of "Johneeeeeeeeeee... X!" Hit the read link for the full clip, and check out another video after the break which helps to unravel the mystery.

[Via Pocket-lint]

Look, LG, it's all well and good the Secret has a touchscreen and that sweet DivX-capable 5 megapixel camera, but making a viral video that can only be described as early-90s softcore voodoo porn and ends with a sheepish phone call from the dude's mother is probably not the best way to highlight those qualities. Video after the break -- warning, it's just a hair on the NSFW side.

We've seen a lot of pretty bad corporate attempts to woo the YouTube crowd -- for every Will It Blend? there's a million PSP disasters -- so these two clips from Fon and Philips score some points for actually making us smile. Fon unleashed a WiFi-seeking matador with a ridiculous fake accent on the streets of San Francisco, eventually sending him to a Starbucks to curse the high access charges and champion the Fon Community. It's not exactly a knee-slapper, but it's fairly amusing when the guy calls it "Wi-fee." On the other hand, Philips' mockumentary for their Bodygroom manscaper is one of the best virals we've seen in a long time -- the sad story of Frank "Furback" Sack and his walk-through Coney Island body hair remover is an inspiration to us all, if only for sheer number of double entendres it contains. Check both videos after the break. (Warning: the Philips video has some mildly blue language in it.)

Socket Mobile, the company formerly known as Socket Communication, has set up an intriguing teaser website that alludes to a mysterious smartphone concept. A first glance at the badly put together flash teaser that greats you when you first visit www.socketmobile.com will probably make you reach for your calendar: we can assure you that it is in fact February, just under two months to go until April Fool's Day (we checked.) There's no way we can take the dodgy animation as a confirmation that this device exists, but if Socket Mobile actually expects to release a device based on the concept image above, we can expect it to include a CompactFlash and SecureDigital slot, and for it to run Windows Mobile 5.0. That's it; that's all the information that the dodgy flash animation gives up, other than the concept image above and the assertment that a second concept will appear next week. Until it does, we'll scratch this one up to a really lame attempt at viral marketing, and nothing more.

[Via Pocket PC Thoughts]

Looks like Sony's trying to get all viral on us -- or maybe they're really launching a new Vaio or two "tomorrow," or maybe maybe the site is referencing yesterday's new Vaio SZ updates, but they forgot to take it down. Either way if you point your browser to their "Vaio new" site, some cryptic imagery blows through and asks "New from Sony Vaio / Can it surf in Alaska?" Perhaps their Vaio laptop group are just testing the waters for viral marketing, or perhaps they posted this page a little early (or we're all a little late, and they never took it down), but yesterday and today it reads "come back tomorrow for more," and nothing's yet changed in the flash file titled vaio_summer.swf. Yeah, so what if we're curious. We love Sony laptops, so sue us.

[Thanks, William]

Update: They're changing it alright -- now it asks if you're camera shy. Stay tuned, we're in for another curiosity-piquing campaign that'll probably yield, well, a laptop of one kind or another.