The Good News Blog

Check out some photos of us at the Bizzone Expo. We met a lot of interesting motivated entrepreneurs who we are really looking forward to potentially working with. We will be announcing the draw of our $5,000 Business Performance Assessment in due course.

As part of Māori Language Week we thought a blog about what we feel is a major step forward for Te Reo Maori was in order. We have recently been informed by ideegeo that the domain registar iWantMyName has launched a service providing registration of macronised domain names. You now have the ability to put in non standard characters in your domian name. This is excellent for Te Reo as the launguage has numerous non standard characters. For a full story check out this Scoop article. To reserve a new Domain name check out iWantMyName For help with domain name related businesses and web application development check out ideegeo

It’s official, at least according to AMP fund manager Jason Wong: the recession of the past 18 months is “more or less” over, as Business Day reports. Announcing the latest returns for AMP’s balanced diversified fund (up by 4.7 percent), Wong said that, while a sturdy pickup in economic growth may be some time away, the worst of the downturn appears to have passed. Among the green shoots Wong sees in New Zealand: a recovery in consumer and business confidence; a remarkable bounceback in house sales volumes, and a rise in net migration. Household borrowing and retail sales are also rising. "On balance, we think the recession is pretty much over.”

Business is all about choice, and business news too. From the “Two Stories for the Price of One” department, comes a couple of strikingly different reports this week on the New Zealand economic outlook. In the first, carried by the Wall Street Journal, readers learn that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has confirmed early signs of global recovery now emerging that New Zealand look likely to put this country ahead of the pack in recovering. The report quotes central banker Alan Bollard telling a business audience that the world has emphatically "avoided a repeat of the Great Depression". Meanwhile, the Otago Daily Times takes a strikingly different view, reporting on Prime Minister John Key delivering “lots of gloomy news” but providing “little inspirational thinking about how New Zealand might better itself in the near term.” The Good News Blog has a clear favourite here in terms of which report offers the superior perspective.