Someone give FCC chairman Kevin Martin a Red Bull, because he’s definitely asleep on the job. How else can we explain the thumbs up recently given to both the Sirius/XM and Verizon/Alltel mergers on his watch? While Martin happily panders to the public with far-flung plans for free, nationwide wireless Web access (that’ll be the day…), he’s been delinquent with the most important of duties charged to him: shielding us from the unfair business practices of monopolies. What happened to the FCC that had our best interests in mind when it dismantled Ma Bell in 1984?

Being a tech consumer is a treacherous endeavor these days. Installing software, upgrading a piece of hardware or even just plugging in a new peripheral is a pursuit wrought with danger. That’s because, as a man named Murphy has us conditioned to believe, something will inevitably go wrong. And when things do go haywire—when Part A won’t play nice with Part B—you’re left trying to figure out just what’s to blame. Is it your operating system? Is it the USB port on your computer? Is it your thingamajig’s firmware?

Right now, you can’t watch TV or walk into a store without seeing those three dreaded words, “BACK TO SCHOOL.” Their presence can mean but one thing: The summer death knell tolls thunderously.

But, wait—there’s time! We still have a precious few weeks to get out and travel, hit the beach or soak up The Great Outdoors. And, if you’re going to do any of these things, chances are you’ll be reading a book somewhere along the way. So, I’ve taken it upon myself to test out two technically advanced methods of getting my lit on. It’s a head-to-head throwdown between Amazon’s nifty new Kindle device and an iTunes audio book. Can they replace the good old-fashioned dog-eared paperback? Well, I did find things I liked about both experiences during my experiment, but this just wouldn’t be The Grouse without unleashing a little vitriol. Now, let’s have at it.

Like many Americans today, the economy is currently using me as its punching bag. So, I’ve decided to take a hard look at my monthly expenses and lop off anything I think I can live without—a financial amputation before gangrene sets in, if you’ll permit the metaphor. First in the crosshairs is my landline; I’m wondering if I can completely replace it with the much heralded and much cheaper Internet-based phone service, Skype.

People are ditching landlines for cellphones at a record pace, and if the Web has conditioned us to hold one truth to be self-evident, it’s that anything and everything can be had for free or practically free. So why is my phone bill still so damn expensive?

If you subject yourself to as many RSS feeds as I do every morning, then you might be wise to the fact that there’s a bit of mutiny percolating in parts of the blogosphere—a mutiny against tech darlings Apple and Google. Yes, Microsoft is, has always been and will for the foreseeable future continue to be the big bad wolf of the tech world. But as each new version of Windows comes out antiquated or broken before it ever goes on sale, and the company comes up short in the search, advertising and online services sectors, it seems as though the wolf may be losing its bite.

Im going to be straight with you—if you dont click one of the ads on this page, were all doomed. Maybe not today or tomorrow or next week; but if all those banners and pop-ups and pop-unders and interstitials and nagging floating ads continue to be ignored, or worse, blocked outright, were every one of us in a mess of trouble. Im talking the entire high-flying media world dropping from the sky like flaming meteors. Like it or not, were all in an economic cold war. However, in this one, were fighting against ourselves.

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Its the time of year when a boys fancy turns to speculating about the new iPhone, or what Ill call JesusPhone 2: The Resurrection. Though Apple is of course tight-lipped about when its due to hit streets, or if it even exists for that matter, anecdotal reports are trickling in from sources both solid and shady about chipsets, design, features, and so-on. General consensus is itll grace planet Earth sometime in June, on or around the Apple developers conference. In preparation for that momentous event, Ill guide you on a tour of hopes, dreams and predictions for JP2. And then—you guessed it—Im going to poop all over them.

The readers have spoken—and I shall heed your call! Based on the flurry of responses from a Grouse column last month (in which I bemoaned the snake oil sales tactics of the overpriced cable market), theres clearly a hunger out there for clarity when it comes to parsing the jargon-filled nonsense thats used to market consumer electronics. Hype is always to be expected when it comes to sales, but unfortunately sometimes conventional wisdom gets swept up in the hubbub and eventually we find ourselves believing in techie urban legends. Great for sellers, not so much for consumers. So taking my own advice, Im following the Gadgetry Golden Rule and passing on a five choice bits of somewhat counter-intuitive wisdom Ive had need for and which may inform your next purchase. Pay it forward—hit the comments section with your own, and spread the word.

Over the past dozen columns of Grousings, Ive occasionally, sometimes vehemently, nominated various bits of gadgetry to an ad hoc deathwatch list. In particular I singled out Polaroid photos, home photo printers; disposable batteries; and Sprints WiMAX venture Xohm (maybe even Sprint itself, if they arent careful). Some of those predictions are necessarily more long-term than others, and some probably wishful thinking.

Since long before the dawn of this century (always wanted to say that), tech pundits and proselytizers have been consulting their trusty prediction machines and proclaiming The Year of Wireless. It happened when IR ports showed up on laptops, then again when wireless mice began gracing desktops. Nearly everyone got on the bandwagon when Wi-Fi appeared, followed again with GPRS, EDGE, EVDO, etc—and of course with that most overpromised and underdelivered of technologies, Bluetooth.

Depending on who you talk to, it seems Im either a wretched wastrel polluter on par with some smoke spewing Linfen factory, or Im a Rainbow Warrior mincing around in hemp sandals looking for a tree to embrace. Im speaking of my carbon footprint naturally: the rough calculation of how my lifestyle impacts the Earth. With our planets health constantly in debate these days—is the atmosphere really warming, and if so is that actually bad, and if so is it our fault, and if so can we do anything about it?—I was curious to see how I chalked up and consulted several of the various calculators found online. Putting in the numbers, the completely contradictory estimates nicely reflect the murkiness of the debate were currently in. It also calls into question the budding market for carbon offsets—the process of hedging your environmental impact by putting money into environmentally sound resources.

For the vast majority of us, few are the occasions when our opinions matter in any meaningful way. Say what you will about the importance of teaching your children, or being in charge of your office budget or participating in the voting process, but the sad reality is that your wisdom is an underutilized asset… except when it comes to your tech savvy. If youre reading this, its your responsibility to go out in the world and evangelize against the temptations of bad tech gear.

It was in the third hour of a bewildering odyssey into the iTunes rental wilderness (I and my crew were fiercely at arms with a six-foot DVI cable) when a quote I had read in the paper earlier that day came back to me with sudden, crystalline truthiness. It was in a brief New York Times piece recounting a staged talk between exmedia mogul Michael Eisner and polymath Mark Cuban at last weeks SXSW Interactive conference.

To spend our precious time here together moaning about how royally screwed up our cellphone companies are here in the States would at this point be too easy. You know the drill: Half-assed handsets, crippled functionality, spotty signals, dumbfounding user interfaces, outrageously priced call plans, incomprehensible outsourced customer service reps from a far-off land, and lets not even talk about the indentured servitude contracts. No, the topic is cliché at this point, so today Id like to take a positive spin on things.

Perusing my cable/Internet bill this month from my local de facto monopoly, I picked my jaw off the floor and found myself on the horns of an ethical dilemma: To be a bandwidth thief, or not to be? That is indeed the question, as the fleetfooted Roadrunner has once again jacked prices through the stratosphere, leaving us folk on terra firma scratching our heads. The deal is, I get the same TV channels, and less bandwidth, but for more money. Genius! Tallying the rest of my monthly bills up against my humble paycheck, I started to get queasy, lightheaded and tired, and then I realized what it was. Ive got a full-blown case of Subscription Fatigue.