News from the upside!
Welcome to The Upside, your destination for uplifting stories and positive news from around the country. In a world often filled with challenging headlines, we aim to bring a refreshing perspective by celebrating the inspiring moments, acts of kindness, and achievements that showcase the best of New Zealand. From heartwarming community efforts to breakthrough innovations,The Upside is dedicated to spreading optimism and highlighting the bright side of life. Let’s shine a light on the good happening all around us!
Nonu Breaking Records and MPs In Car-alition
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. Four MPs in a car-alition The fighting, name calling, and turmoil that often dominates our parliament is very often...
Bystander Saves Boy and Strangers On A Plane
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. Hero bystander Being a part of a society sometimes requires us to do difficult things and oftentimes the danger of...
OCR Cut, Clever Cat Burglar, and World Record Cyclist
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. OCR cut cause for optimism On Wednesday the Reserve Bank cut the Official Cash Rate (OCR) by 50 basis points to 2.5%,...
Father and Son Moment and Fantastic Singer of National Anthem
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. Father surprises son at All Blacks test Before last week's test kicked off between the All Blacks and Australia at...
Incredibly Generous Builder and Stupendous Toy Collection
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. Builder saves couple's dream After losing nearly $100,000 in deposits to a building company that entered into...
Time Capsule Unearthed and KiwI Runner Wins Gold
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. Huge win for Kiwi runner New Zealand runner George Beamish achieved an incredible win this week at the World...
Bees Rob Honey Store and Lightsaber Sells For Millions
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. Bees rob beekeeper's shop This story is yet another astonishing example of the ingenuity of the other creatures on our...
Rescuing food waste to feed hungry Kiwis
NoCowboys has recently signed up to sponsor a fantastic Kiwi charity that rescues and distributes food waste to help feed needy families. For September and October NoCowboys will donate $1 for every job posted on our site and 10 cents for every review. We are very...
Talkative Tūī, Sunken City, and Card Sold For Record Price
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. Talkative tūī a big hit Pleakly - a young tūī with a gift for mimicking human speech has become a big hit online, as...
Hotel To Be Redeveloped, Generous Stranger, and Thoughtful Postie
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. Christchurch icon gets new lease of life Growing up in Christchurch, Noahs Hotel on Oxford Terrace was a familiar...
Passport Eating Dog, Hodgkins’ Painting Discovered, and Inspirational Teacher Passes
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. Teacher who inspired and created leaders I recently stumbled across a story about a Wellington teacher and athletic...
Massive Lighting, Huge Aussie Insect, and Message Found A Century Later
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. Mother nature is truly amazing This story is rather mind boggling and proves yet again just how awesome - in the...
Board Game Awarded, Kiwi Loves Milk Tankers, And Fantastic Road Worker
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. A man who loved milk tankers This a lovely tale about a Kiwi with a rare illness and how one of our biggest companies...
Should old acquaintance be forgot
For many of us, New Year's Eve is the time to throw off all of the ills of the passing year and spend time with good friends and family and party like you mean it – all the while heralding the new year to come. The tradition of New Years is millennia old – in the...
Bug Of The Year, Top Kiwi Olympian, and Speedgolfing Champion
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. Endangered moth crowned bug of the year In case you missed it, a rare moth found only in certain places in the West...
And so this is Christmas . . .
And so this is Christmas. Without lurching any further into the John Lennon and Yoko Ono song, I’ll just take the opening few words. And so this is Christmas. For many it’s the best time of the year, for some it is simply the worst. No other day in the year generates...
Consumers want recent reviews and they are looking for them more than ever
Each year BrightLocal releases its much respected Local Consumer Review Survey. Since 2010 it has become an important tool for analysing consumer behaviour and online reviews. The 2018 survey, released this week, indicates some interesting shifts in consumer...
You only sing when you’re winning
It really is the strangest thing when the most successful team in world sport comes under so much attack, after a few less than stellar performances. It’s stranger still when that team is the All Blacks and those leading the charge to put the boot in are so called All...
Checking the online vitality of your business
One of the most surprising thing to me when talking to business owners is the large percentage that do not do the simplest thing to analyse the strength of their business online - regularly Googling their business name. Searching your own business name regularly is...
Getting help when resolution is impossible
Human beings are incredibly complex animals, and no matter how ‘evolved’ we are, there are some things that we struggle with. Since the dawn of time we have fought each other, over large and small matters. Conflict is possibly the most challenging aspect of human life...
Law Named After Loyal Dog, Volunteer Hut Cleaners, and Honest Citizens
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. Volunteers clean hiking huts This is a really nice story that sheds light on the fantastic things achieved when...
Picking a restaurant because of a negative review
Earlier this year I was in Christchurch and was looking for a diner to eat breakfast at. Christchurch has a number of great breakfast diners and I wanted to find one I hadn’t been to before. So, I Googled it and there were a few options – all not too far away and all...
Marketing a reputation in boom times and bust
Marketing is a vital element to every business’ success and viability. Like other essentials, it needs to be nurtured and more importantly – it requires a commitment – to ensure that a business’ name, brand, and services are continually present where they are most...
Are our phones making us a better species?
It’s strange that we still call them mobile phones. Using them as a device to make actual ‘phone calls’ is the very smallest part of their function and use. In reality they are extensions, connections to nearly any sort of information at any time – only hindered by...
Creating space around the home
Now that Daylight Savings is here and we have an extra hour of evening light up our sleeves, it’s a great time to think about making sure that our homes are ready for all of the glories of long, balmy summer days. Think about pruning what you don’t need Just like with...
Heroic 13 Year Old, Fastest Man Alive, and Kiwi Teen Runner Breaks Record
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. Teen runner blitzes record Ever since Roger Bannister broke the for minute mile in 1954, athletes all over the world...
We can’t afford to mess with the truth
No matter which country you live in some things stay the same – the professions that top off the lists of most distrusted professions. Across the board it is politicians and journalists that take top spots (or bottom spots) in polls regarding trust and reputation....
Google it . . .
Not so long ago there were a number of search engines competing for consumers’ attention. Today that’s not the case and one search engine holds a solid monopoly – so much so that its name is now the popular terminology for online searching. Want to know the time in...
125 years – and the fight goes on
This week marks a special milestone in New Zealand history – 125 years since women were granted the right to vote. While it may seem ludicrous now that there was ever a time that women needed to fight so hard and for so long to be granted a fundamental right that men...
Losing keeps winners winning
By virtue of its phenomenal ratio of wins against losses and draws, the All Blacks are the most successful team in sports. The New Zealand rugby public has become so used to their national team beating other nations in test matches that losses are considered too much...
When tarnishing a reputation isn’t the right thing to do
In the history of All Blacks rugby it’s harder to find a more hard done by player than Keith Murdoch. His dismissal while on tour in the UK in 1972 for punching a security guard at a hotel in Cardiff is remarkable, not only for the severity of the punishment he...
Record Breaking Toddler, Death Defying Climber, and Sailor On Cusp of Historic Feat
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. Toddler sinks Guinness records Snooker is a difficult game, made easier by a tonne of practice but one wee fella in...
The dangers of relying on word of mouth alone
For a while I have been thinking about one of the more remarkable statistics about online reviews that has been steadily increasing in the past few years. I thought about it again after reading a news story about a roofer in Dunedin who has allegedly done a runner and...
We’re all going to Bonnie Doon!!
About eight years ago I had to attend a conference in Sydney and after booking a fare looked online for accommodation. I searched by location and made my choice on price. So long as I was close enough to the venue and the price was right, then I was happy, or so I...
There’s a sucker born every minute . . .
In a case of life mirroring fiction, a recent insidious email scam bears some striking resemblances to an episode of UK TV show Black Mirror, where a visitor to online porn sites is blackmailed and coerced into undertaking a number of criminal activities to supposedly...
Online reviews are tangible goodwill for a business
A recent news story about a campground operator in Gore, Southland got me thinking about online reviews, goodwill, and word of mouth. The traditional method of spreading goodwill about a business was analogue and worked perfectly well in the pre-digital age. One...
Smart Cow, Finding Da Vinci’s DNA, and Oldest Cave Art
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. Oldest cave art discovered Beating the oldest example of human hand painting by 1,100 years, a recent discovery in a...
Forging a new reputation
A renowned writer once famously wrote that there's no such thing as a second act in American lives - meaning that it's not possible to change, to reinvent, to forge a new path. F Scott Fitzgerald's epigram isn't a truism and wasn't intended to be. Reinvention is part...
How the game is played matters most of all
Every four years the most watched sport on the planet serves up a carnival that decides which nation's team wins the FIFA World Cup. In just over four weeks, 32 teams get whittled down to one and along the way there is all the drama, beauty, desperation, and...
Online reviews take new business from zero to market player in 18 months
I speak to thousands of business owners each year – from sole traders with a crew of one - doing everything from the actual work, the invoicing, the quoting, the tax, the marketing, the bookkeeping, the advertising and everything else involved with running a business,...
Online reviews are a sure sign of a proactive business
One of the facets of being successful in business is adhering to the principle of proactivity – staying ahead of the game, being prepared, having plans and strategies in place to ensure that when anything happens there is a solution to take care of it. Oddly enough,...
Reviews and The Consumer Guarantees Act – know your rights
Nobody likes being taken for a ride, being sold misleading or faulty goods, or paying for services that aren't up to scratch. It is well worth knowing your rights under the Consumer Guarantees Act (CGA) 1993, not only for when things go wrong but also in instances...
Wandering Sheep, New Christchurch Supermarket, and First Superman Comic Auctioned
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. New supermarket takes off Offering lower prices and giving consumers a choice over the supermarket duopoly in New...
Ingenious ways to transform shipping containers into luxury homes
You can create a beautiful, relatively low-cost shipping container home simply by adding a touch of luxury to a shipping container. If you have decided that you would prefer a shipping container home rather than a small house with basic insulation, these ingenious...
Turning customer databases into more sales through direct marketing
In the second part of a series on how to increase profitability by a number of simple and cost-effective methods, we take a look ways of harnessing the value and power of a customer database. No matter the size of a business, there will be details of hundreds or even...
Small steps to increase profitability
Businesses are always looking for ways to increase profit and in this series we will be offering some tips on ways to do exactly that - without having to invest much at all. These pointers involve doing little things, that will steadily grow the bottom line. How to...
Feeling gravity’s pull – the power of online reviews
Push and pull - the connection between a business and its hoped for customers. What fills the gap? What drives one toward the other? What are the most effective and easiest ways to ensure customers are actively drawn toward a business as opposed to being reached out...
Adventurous Kākā, Street Signs Amuse, and Ancient Artefacts Discovered
Taking a look at recent, positive, uplifting, news stories and yarns, from New Zealand and all around the world, to bring a smile and a bit of cheer. Street signs lift the spirits Just before Christmas, six signs in inner city Christchurch caused a bit of confusion...