News.ai was the first and only web presence for Anguilla through the mid and late 1990’s. Bob Green, the founder, started the site accidentally. It all began shortly after Hurricane Luis in 1995.
Luis battered Anguilla at Cat5 ferocity for 36 hours. It flattened Anguilla. Bob was fortunate to have access to a T1 line, the only Net access remaining. While the rest of the powerless island sweltered, Bob froze while working from an air-conditioned server room (powered by generator).
E-mail updates from Bob to the outside world became web page updates (at first on his own company’s website). These words to the outside world became news.ai! Imagine, out of devastation, Anguilla was given its first presence on the Web.
News.ai soon became a family of sites… beaches.ai, hotels.ai and so forth (see “Anguilla 1995-2005” in left margin). Be sure to check out the huge resource of photographs from that era (“Photo of the Day” in left margin — fun!).