On January 12th, 1988, UPEI.ca became Canada's first .CA domain name. That trail-blazing decision has served many uses in those 25 years, and the seven characters of 'upei.ca' have gone everywhere with us on the Internet. In celebration of this we thought we'd take a little trip down memory lane and take this opportunity to thank all of you who make our work on UPEI.ca worthwhile. We were going to replace the current UPEI home page and send you all back in time to the Web in 1988... except there wasn't any Web in 1988. The World Wide Web didn't start until 1991. Instead, we thought we would show you a few of the ways in which upei.ca has brought the world to our university, and our university to the world.

Cheers,

Dave Cormier - Manager, Web Communications and Innovations

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January 12, 1988

"It’s hard for most people today to imagine a time without the Internet. UPEI was one of the 10 founding university members that brought the Internet to Canada, those many years ago. At our Board meeting in Victoria, BC, when we signed the final agreements, one of the members said “it is like building the first railroad across Canada” – this time an electronic railroad, linking our country in a way we never imagined. We had no idea where this internet “thing” would lead, but it has changed our world profoundly. In being the first .CA domain, it clearly shows that our University has had, and will continue to have, a very important role to play not only in PEI, but in Canada."

- Jim Hancock, Past Director of Computer Services at UPEI

And so Canada got its first domain name.

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October 24, 1990

Dear Colleagues on the island of Red-Haired (Akage-no) Anne, On behalf of the Todai International Science Network, I wish to welcome you to the global computer network system for basic research. We know through our experience the amount of work you must have done to install the link: let us congratulate for your success. Our network system, Todai ( Acronym in Japanese for Univ. of Tokyo) International Science Network, has been set up only one and a half year ago to link major Japanese research institutions. In our short history most of our users have already recognized the power and the importance of a high-speed international computer link: we hope many international collaborative works will emerge on the network, including a case study of the psychology of the adolesent seen in Akage-no Anne. We wish you a successful opening ceremony. Regards, Tuneyoshi KAMAE Chairman of TISN Professor Department of Physics University of Tokyo TCP/IP Kamae@tkyvax.phys.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp DECnet 41610::KAMAE BITnet kamae@jpnkekvx

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1993

"While the university’s work in this regard had tremendous benefits for the institution itself, it benefited Prince Edward Island as a whole in many other ways. In my case it made for my first contact with PEI when I was applying for a job here – an email from Morley Pinsent using the CA*Net email system hosted by UPEI that was free to any Islander who asked – and, once I relocated here, it was my conduit to the greater world through my email address caprukav@atlas.cs.upei.ca"

This from a blog post by local internet pioneer, Peter Rukavina

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1998

The earliest website we could find for UPEI.ca comes from 1998. This was the website we 'almost' replaced our current new homepage for - but we worried that our current students might not be able to find the things they were looking for... so we're linking to it here.

Had to include an animated GIF. We couldn't help ourselves.

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December 31st, 1999

Y2K the most terrible thing to ever happen to the internet. We had a website for that too. It is very, very green.

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2000-2005

Locally known as 'The Yellow Page', it was designed by UPEI students who went on to do big things in the internet world.

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2006

The colours have changed, things have gotten brighter and there are more images as the internet was speeding up and we could rely on students to have faster internet connections.

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2007

Another try at it. This one really does give a sense of how beautiful the campus is.

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2008-2012

This is the first design that was done by the current web team. The UPEI 'word mark' is present and this was the website that we had right up until late December of last year.

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And now, well, you can see the new website. We like to think that we're part of a long tradition of helping people connect with each other online. Feel free to tell us about what you remember about UPEI.ca or tell us what you think of the current one by sending us a message.