Algoma U abuzz over $22.5 million lottery win. Almost

Algoma University IT Department smarty-pants Rose Taylor, Brad Madigan, Craig Diotte and Danny Reid have a lot to smile about today.

As their colleagues fired up their computers on this not-so-average Wednesday morning, and as the SooToday.com home page popped up, Algoma U employees found a story revealing that their IT Department had won the lottery.

$22.5 million was to be shared amongst the department's eight employees.

And they all planned on retiring early.

It would seem that not many at the university looked closely at the calendar this morning, not realizing that it was, in fact, April Fool's Day.

Screams of delight were reportedly heard from the student services office, congratulations were offered from students, staff and faculty, and a phone call was placed to the OLG office to confirm the story.

It took Reid, the brains behind the operation, about an hour to create the fake SooToday.com page, which was only seen by readers connected to the Algoma U server.

Aside from a few minor formatting differences, Reid did a brilliant job creating an authentic-looking story thanks to some official SooToday.com style advice from our news editor.

Click here to view a screen shot of Reid's handiwork.

"It took the longest to photoshop the fake OLG cheque into the picture," Reid told us this afternoon. "If I had more time I would have put in a fake OLG office background."

This is the second year in a row Reid has used the SooToday.com home page for an April Fool's Day prank.

Last year, he inserted script onto the Algoma U server to invert our website image.

Reid says he's already started thinking about next year's prank, although it may be difficult to fool anyone with further SooToday.com manipulation.

"Next year they'll be expecting it so it'll be trickier to rope people in," he said. "I'll have to come at it from a completely different angle."