Did you hear?… SPAM email from Ron Hilbert

SNEWS®, along with what appeared to be more than 400 other companies, was in receipt this morning of a SPAM email from Ron Hilbert, president of ECH Technology Corporation of Roseville (near Sacramento, Calif.) announcing that he was no longer part of Adventure Sports Online (ASO)/OutdoorMind LLC and that his new company now owned all the servers and hardware ASO and OutdoorMind utilized. Hilbert also stated that, “Ron created Adventure Sports Online…. He was able to get Adventure Sports Online up 10 months before Bill Gates had ever seen the Internet in 1995.” On the heels of that email came another, this time from ASO, stating that, “Please accept our apologies for this unauthorized use of our client list…. ECH is responsible for maintaining our technology platform, nothing more, nothing less.” SNEWS® View: We contacted Lane Evans, majority owner of ECH, who assured us that the company did not intend any harm in the email, but acknowledged that the release was sent out without his knowledge. While we admire Hilbert’s audacious claim for knowing all about the Internet before Gates (we’re not sure Gates would agree, but we doubt Hilbert asked him), this release is clearly suffering from a medical condition known as “premature news exaggeration.” Bottom line: ASO is still very much in business, does not answer to ECH, and basically pays ECH simply to provide the company with server space and technical support.