We received word this morning of the formation of a coalition of associations, if you will, whose joint purpose will be the establishment of a set of principles for companies in the online advertising business. The promise of this new group of groups, as yet unnamed, will be to develop a set of guidelines for the use of behavioral monitoring tools.

And it's obvious from the get-go that a message is being set to the incoming administration, which could only possibly be more pro-active about consumer protection policies than the current one. It's a very polite message, but what it boils down to is, please, incoming FTC chairperson, leave us alone and let us take care of our own affairs.

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While the incoming Obama administration is considering suspending the countdown for the nationwide switch to digital television, the 50th State is preparing to actually throw the switch on Thursday.

Hawaii's standard-strength broadcasters will power down their analog signals on January 15, in the first statewide test of the DTV transition. However, recently fine-tuned regulations stipulate that low-power (LP) analog broadcasters do not have to power down even after the nationwide February 17 deadline. That affects Hawaii more than most states, since several of the smaller islands are served by LP stations. One such station on Kau'ai, KESU Channel 6, is actually a radio station since the audio portion of Channel 6 has always been available on 87.7 MHz (that's true everywhere in the country). But KESU sometimes supplements its audio signal with a picture, making it one of the nation's only "semi-TV" stations, and it'll be allowed to keep its unusual format.

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Last Wednesday, legislation was introduced in the House that would make the Electronic Software Ratings Board (ESRB) affix a health warning label on T-rated games that links their violent content to real-life aggression.

Called The Video Game Health Labeling Act of 2009 (H.R. 231), and sponsored by Congressmen Joe Baca (D - Calif.) and Frank R. Wolf (R - Va.), the legislation calls for violent video games to be labeled with a sticker that says "WARNING: Excessive exposure to violent video games and other violent media has been linked to aggressive behavior."

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The Washington Post and other mainstream pubs reported yesterday that Obama transition team member Julius Genachowski is on tap for the new head of the FCC, but canny observers spotted an open bag and a leaping cat last Saturday at CES when CEA head Gary Shapiro cracked wise to ongoing chair Kevin Martin about giving Obama's old Harvard Law Review colleague "some advice."

Martin said that he'd tell Genachowski that "If you try to go back to some of the rules that were in place in, oh, 2001, you will depress the telecommunications industry. And you have to be prepared to make hard decisions." Observers of the civil liberties scene wonder if the "rules that were in place" include the restrictions against unauthorized wiretapping, but one supposes that the first crisis he's got on his hands would be the DTV switchover -- whether or not it happens as scheduled on February 17. (Martin stated at CES that he opposes any delay in the switch.)

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"This is an old team," began Edward R. Murrow in his very first See It Now broadcast for CBS Television, "trying to learn a new trade."

Now, over the past few years, I've been guilty of telling folks that Betanews is not a blog, in the same spirit as telling your neighbor trying to borrow your sports car to haul furniture that it's not a truck. A few reasons for that: I don't want Betanews to become one of these peanut-galleries for the practice of would-be journalism -- of essentially replicating stories seen or printed elsewhere and calling it "coverage." We won't be doing that here, and thus ends my list of the things that Betanews Alpha is not.

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It could be here in five months; it could be here sooner. But even before the Palm Pre has a firm release date, there are a few datapoints and checkpoints you need to keep an eye on.

Dollars and demand. In the wake of CES, the pricing and supply picture is becoming clearer. At this point it's believed that the Pre will be priced at under $200 with a two-year Sprint contract and at either $399 or $499 without it. That's steep, sure, but not at all out of line for a high-end handset from Sprint (or anyone else).

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During the latter part of CES last week, the talk was about the possibility that Apple -- which, after all, decided to pull out of its participation in IDG's Macworld conference next year, perhaps dooming it -- would be a featured guest at next year's Vegas extravaganza. That could mean Steve Jobs in the keynote, and Apple technology going chrome-to-chrome against Sony, RIM, and presumably now, Palm. We did hear word last week that Consumer Electronics Association officials were planning to develop a Mac-oriented section of the show, as it was described, though whether that section would include Apple or whether Apple has been invited, has not been revealed.