The Japan earthquake disaster is massive, but not whole of Japan’s citizens are affected. Still, surviving victims from the affected region are going to face a tough time over the coming months, if not years. Many of those who are more fortunate have been actively contributing in one way or another, regardless of distance, to help put Japan on its road to recovery, and to help out their own people in such critical times when some even lost their family members.

And our person of the article is one such generous person non-other than Softbank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son, who’s recently visited Tamura, one of the cities most affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. During that trip, Son announced that Softbank will cover a year’s worth of living costs (commute and food) and provide job positions for the 1,200 people to be relocated to Takeo in Saga, the prefecture where Son originated.

Additionally, Son is using Softbank’s “Let’s Do It” campaign site — a tracker for his “Let’s Do It” tasks posted on Twitter, each accompanied by a completion status indicator — to crowdsource requests for supporting earthquake victims. So far, these requests are mainly about ways to increase efficiency for donation efforts (like publishing a live list of item shortages for each shelter, and setting up new mobile networks at the shelters). Last week, one of Son’s followers suggested that Softbank should provide orphaned children free phone credit for a limited time, so that they could contact their friends and other family members.

Son then retweeted this idea and announced that all earthquake orphans will receive free phones, along with call costs waived until they reach the age of 18. It’s worth pointing out that Son said he’s also happy to help pay phone bills for earthquake orphans who are already on other networks, including DoCoMo. Good on ya, sir! Respect to you sir! Another gadget-related initiative came in earlier today with Son promising free replacement for all lost or damaged iPhones due to the earthquake, with details to follow later.

Good news for Android users, and owners of Motorola Droidphones, you’re now given an unholy chance to have Gingerbread on your phone. Yes, the unholy and unofficial method introduced by ‘My Droid World’. Hopefully we’ll get to see more phones transcend into Gingerbread by this year. Gingerbread brings you the new blue Blur, a customizable dock, an app management shortcut, an overhauled camera app, and super-fast navigation speeds, among other things. So for you eager beavers who just can’t wait for an official release, follow the source links below and feed your Droid some Gingerbread.

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These days it is quite rare to hear news of viruses infecting mobile phones, but a new round of viruses has been making waves onto cellphones in China, and they do mean serious problem. According to Shanghai Daily, a so-called zombie virus disguised as an anti-virus app has infected more than one million cellphone users in the country, and it has left users’ phones vulnerable to the malicious hackers that created the virus. Virus disguised as anti-virus has been known to hit computers, but this is the first for cellphones.

They’ve naturally taken advantage of that access to not only spread the virus further, but cash in by spamming the phones with money-making links and other general annoyances — all of which has also added up to about $300,000 a day in added text message charges for the users affected. Now the funny side of the story is that, apparently authorities have managed to track down the source, or the company that’s said to have developed such program, but they’ve pleaded innocent and insists that they’re actually a victim of it as well.

SOURCE via Yahoo! News

Yes, the Palm Pre 2 has been launched only recently, but the team in Palm sure didn’t only undergo that project when they develop the WebOS 2.0. Homebrew hub WebOS Internals spent last week digging through SFR’s webOS 2.0 build for the Palm Pre 2, and surfaced with the names Broadway, Windsor, Mantaray and Stingray, as well as the Roadrunner. More telling, these five codenames appeared in a string designed to display the message “temporarily not restoring logs for newer devices,” which means these projects are rather new in the company.

If you drive a Lamborghini, you’ll need some gadgets to go along the style and aura that you emit right? You already have the Asus Lamborghini notebook as your mobile gaming machine, now you need a Lamborghini phone to answer some calls in style. No, the iPhone and Blackberry doesn’t cut the cue as they’re too norm for people who can’t afford the Lamborghini. You’ll need this! Read more…

And they’re obviously massively covered with diamonds. Surely something the filthy rich would want. I mean, if you’re THAT rich, do you want to have the same phone as the rest of the millions of people in this world? Not really. So, you look for Stuart Hughes and he customizes your iPhone 4 into the “world’s most expensive phone”. That’s the case for the Australian client. Hughes made two identical models for him (or her) and each handset includes over 500 diamonds and total of over 100 karats. Since it’s so special (and bloody hell expensive) it also comes with its own special granite box. Well, hopefully this diamond crafted iPhone 4 will solve the antenna issue too. How much? Yes, everyone wanted to ask, because they can’t afford. Well, it’s £5 million, which is around USD8 million. How many normal iPhone 4 can you get with that amount of money?

SOURCE via swns

Michael Dell, daddy of the mighty Dell, has teased the rest of the public with a 7-inch glass that looks kind of funky. What he pulled out from his pocket is an Android tablet. Besides showing that he could fool around with that piece of glass device, Dell also announced that the smaller Streak is heading to Best Buy next month. Hopefully it’s running on Froyo, or else all fun would be spoilt.

SOURCE via [Wall Street Journal and Reuters]

Check out the Wipe Shirt by unit FIFT, Katsunari and Ami Igarashi. The shirt comes with have built-in microfiber clothes for wiping cell phones or glasses. Priced at ¥13,650, around $150 after conversion. More pictures after the break. Read more…

LG Electronics has launched a new smartphone called ‘LG GW550′ in twenty countries starting in Brazil and Argentina. It is running on Windows Mobile 6.5 OS and comes with 12mm-thick 2.4-inch LCD screen, 3.2M camera, Wi-Fi support, A-GPS, high-performance dual-speaker and front-facing QWERTY keyboard. It also has the ‘Smart E-mail’ and ‘Smart Contact’ functions. The LG GW550 is a phone targetting on businessman.

[via Aving]

SKY has launched a new CDMA flip phone called TILT. It is an enhanced electronic dictionary function in Korea market. It is designed with straight line body and a metal frame. Its dictionary supports 330,000 words and 2,467 conversations with native speaker voice. TILT comes a 2.7-inch display and seven LED lights, it features video playback, T-DMB, a 2.0-megapixel camera and an external memory. One more shot after the break. Read more…