Week in tech: Freeview, Open XML and lame jokes

Freeview's a go
So Freeview HD is live and the digital terrestrial set-top boxes are selling priced from $399, about a hundred dollars cheaper than initially anticipated. Expect more discounting as set-top box importers pile into the market in the next couple of months.
I didn't catch the first HD episode of Boston Legal on Wednesday night, but I did check out The Back Benches and Media7, the two new Freeviews. But I did so via the internet and outside the original broadcast times. They both seem a little rough around the edges but show promise.
The Guardian reports that the United Kingdom will get Freeview HD from "as early as" next year and Aussie broadcasters have been over to check out our Freeview set-up with a view to replicating it in Australia.
Fibre Co gets lukewarm reception
The New Zealand Institute's $5 billion plan to get fibre to 75 per cent of the population has been publicly slammed by players like Vodafone and thrashed even further by industry insiders in private.
The biggest criticisms I've heard from people who know about communications network build outs has to do with the calculations the NZI lays out in the document. Many say they are unrealistic. There are also mutterings about the $2.7 - $4.4 billion in productivity gains the NZI suggests the country will gain from everyone having access to fibre-based broadband services. A common argument in the broadband debate is that if we don't invest in broadband infrastructure, we'll slip further behind in international benchmarks like the OECD broadband rankings.
But commentator Bruce McKay had something to say about that this week and evoked former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli's "lies, damn lies and statistics" speech to suggest our obsession with OECD number will force us into "useless and counterproductive actions".
Anyway, form what I've heard this week, the Government has a card to play on broadband but won't deal it until later in the year, closer to the election. In the meantime, despite what the critics say, David Skilling and the NZI deserve credit for recognising broadband as an important issue and having a crack at offering a long-term solution.
A rare Microsoft victory
The Open XML standards dispute came to a close this week with Microsoft gaining enough international support for the International Standardisation Organisation (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) to ratify Office Open XML as a standard alongside PDF, HTML and ODF.
Microsoft will be relieved, but the whole process has left a bitter taste in the mouth of the tech industry and New Zealand voted against ratification so there's likely to be continuing animosity towards Microsoft here (if there wasn't enough already).
More worryingly for the industry, the fastest-growing tech markets also voted against Open XML, which shows the increasing importance of open source software and standards in the markets that are starting to play a more dominant part in the future world economy.
Lame April Fools' web jokes
There were some awfully bad April Fool's jokes rolled out this year. Most of them could be spotted a mile off. There are unsettling signs that companies are beginning to use the day to unleash a thinly-veiled marketing campaign. They can keep 'em. Putting up a webpage or sending out a press release or email doesn't cut it on the April Fool's front.
There were some clangers released on the web too, made worse by the fact that we're a day behind everyone else so we got a second wave of lame, badly-conceived jokes. Here were some of the worst from overseas.