Brad Stone of the New York Times has a piece in today's paper on the effects of modern technology on the family, specifically in the morning. Stone note how the addiction to gadgets and social networking are altering the great American family morning rituals. Instead of getting up immediately for breakfast or coffee or to read the morning paper, people are going straight to their gadgets to check email and to play around on Facebook and Twitter. In the course of his reporting, Stone profiles a few families, one of which are the Gudes of East Lansing, Michigan.

Today, Mr. Gude wakes at around 6 a.m. to check his work e-mail and his Facebook and Twitter accounts. The two boys, Cole and Erik, start each morning with text messages, video games and Facebook.

The Gudes' sons sleep with their phones next to their beds, so they start the day with text messages in place of alarm clocks. Mr. Gude, an instructor at Michigan State University, sends texts to his two sons to wake up.

"We use texting as an in-house intercom," he said. "I could just walk upstairs, but they always answer their texts."

Now, the Gude family may be the epitome of the modern, wired American family, but isn't the excerpt above kind of, well, sad. Personally, one of the my fondest memories of childhood was of my Mom coming into my room to wake me up each morning for breakfast and to get ready for school. The thought of being woken by freaking text message because Mom's too busy playing around on Twitter is utterly horrifying! How long before they start IMing each other at the damn dinner table? Ugh.

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Since it's launch on April 7th, ImSaturn has seen membership grow to a positively staggering 1,524. That's a huge number of devotees to Saturnalia — it's almost equivalent to 3% of the people who've purchased a Saturn so far this year. And why shouldn't they all be excited? Members get to be wowed with such exciting and amazing features like — press releases and groups organized by Saturn model. Who wouldn't be excited to chat and share stories with other proud owners of the now-defunct Saturn Relay minivan?

But, the online community does take steps to ensure members feel like they play an active role in the company. For instance, when ImSaturn member Rick Murphy 'posted' concerns about a delay in the delivery of his new Astra, company reps like Steve Janisse are there to squash the negative publicity reassure concerned customers by posting a quick response saying,

"So sorry for the long delays...but all of your cars have either already been shipped or will be shipped today. We'll give your retailers an update. If anyone else is looking for their Astra, please let me know."

According to the New York Times, which has breathlessly covered the exciting news, Saturn has a wild side. Apparently — bear with us, we're so excited we can hardly type — the company's planning a contest dubbed "kissmyastra." The contest not only acknowledges people in the 18-34 demographic heart the lower case, but also people who find themselves caught in embarrassing situations with their cars. The contest promises big prizes for people caught with their Astra in the most passionate of positions.

All joking aside, it appears that Saturn's greatest problem may be basic brand and product awareness among the general public, not amongst their own customers. Troy Clarke, President of GM North America described the problem to Automotive News,

"If you look at the purchase funnel, you ask, "Do we have a consideration problem on Saturn or a conversion problem?' The fact of the matter is we have a basic awareness problem."

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(Photo by: Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)

Ziddio was soft-launched last November as a site for uploading personal videos like YouTube. But Comcast hopes it will be differentiated from others by airing users' best videos feature on Comcast's TV On-Demand service. Both companies hope the partnership will attract advertisers.

• Bill Gates says Vista will be ready in January. Unless it won't. [MSNBC]
• Boston thinks it has a hard time with wifi bedouins — cafe moochers who suck up table space and bandwidth without buying a thing. Child's play. In Boston, at least the cafes charge. San Franciscans demand free wifi — and then we figure one cup of coffee earns us a full day's rent. Hell, I'm writing this from Coffee to the People, where I've sat for the last five hours. Try that on for size, Boston. [Boston Globe]
• Old-school Netscape fans are calling the new version "New Coke." That's what AOL gets for saddling progressive exec Jason Calacanis with such a fuddy-duddy user base. [Read/WriteWeb]
• Friendster's patent looks familiar, says the entrepreneur who filed a similar social networking patent five years before Friendster launched. [Boing Boing]
• Can Google do anything without pretending it just saved the world? Business 2.0's bloggers note that Google's new HQ in Michigan isn't a philanthropic effort. Google may spin it as "a shot in the arm" for Michigan's lackluster job market. But don't expect it to pay wages like it does in Silicon Valley — Michigan college grads cost just $47,000 a pop. [Business 2.0]