Monopoly: Earliest surviving set fetches £90k auction figure

The earliest ever version of the board game Monopoly has sold for a whopping £90,000.

The set was one of 5,000 made in 1933 by Charles Darrow, the purported inventor of Monopoly, and is the only one to have survived to this day.

The dog-eared set is made out of a piece of oilcloth and is in the form of the original circular shape that is 33 inches in diameter — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Over 40,000 Does Dismissed In Copyright Troll Cases

These have been some eventful weeks in the world of copyright trolling. Thousands of unnamed John Does in P2P file sharing lawsuits filed in California, Washington DC, Texas, and West Virginia have been severed, effectively dismissing over 40,000 defendants. The plaintiffs in these cases must now re-file against almost all of the Does individually rather than suing them en mass — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Over 40,000 Does Dismissed In Copyright Troll Cases

These have been some eventful weeks in the world of copyright trolling. Thousands of unnamed John Does in P2P file sharing lawsuits filed in California, Washington DC, Texas, and West Virginia have been severed, effectively dismissing over 40,000 defendants. The plaintiffs in these cases must now re-file against almost all of the Does individually rather than suing them en mass — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Google Recipe Search Cooks Up Next Gen of Search

Stepping into the kitchen now, Google introduced a recipe search engine Thursday that serves up dishes based not only on the ingredients you may have on hand, but the calories you want to consume and even how much time you have to cook.

About one percent of the queries on Google are for recipes, the company said, and the new vertical intends to make it easier for people to find recipes across the web. Keeping with its search roots, Google isn’t showing the recipes in the results, and is linking to recipes on sites like Epicurious and the Food Network, which likely alleviates some worries about Google’s newest effort — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Google Penalizes Overstock for Search Tactics

Google Inc. is penalizing Overstock.com Inc in its search results after the retailer ran afoul of Google policies that prohibit companies from artificially boosting their ranking in the Internet giant’s search engine.

Overstock’s pages had recently ranked near the top of results for dozens of common searches, including vacuum cleaners and laptop computers. But links to Overstock on Tuesday dropped to the fifth or sixth pages of Google results for many of those categories, greatly reducing the chances that a user would click on its links.

The incident, according to Overstock, stemmed in part from its practice of encouraging websites of colleges and universities to post links to Overstock pages so that students and faculty could receive discounts on the shopping site. Overstock said it discontinued the program on 10 February, before hearing from Google, but said some university webmasters have been slow to remove the links — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Eleventh Hour Rescue Of Turing Collection

Almost nothing tangible remains of genius Bletchley Park codebreaker, Alan Turing; so when an extremely rare collection of offprints relating to his life and work was set to go to auction last year, an ambitious campaign was launched to raise funds to purchase them for the Bletchley Park Trust and its Museum. The Trust is today delighted to announce that the collection has been saved for the nation as the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) has stepped in quickly to provide £213,437, the final piece of funding required — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Google Tweaks Algorithm to Push Down Low-Quality Sites

Google said late Thursday that it had made a major change to its algorithm in an effort to improve the rankings of high-quality Web sites in its search results — and to reduce the visibility of low-quality sites. While the company did not say so explicitly, the change appears to be directed in part at so-called content farms like eHow and Answerbag, which generate articles based on popular search queries so they will rise to the top of the rankings and attract clicks — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Report e-mail scams, National Fraud Authority urges

Millions of Britons who receive scam letters and e-mails are now being urged to forward them on just the once – to the National Fraud Authority.

The agency has launched a new operation to track down the fraudsters behind the multi-million pound industry in scam mail, but needs public input.

It wants people to forward e-mails to email@actionfraud.org.uk for analysis — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Take a Rabbit, Leave a Rabbit: Man Charged in Bunny Theft

Apparently someone in Lincoln, Nebraska thinks that you can exchange rabbits. The man allegedly stole a bunny from a pet store and left a jackrabbit in its place.

The incident happened at a Pet Doctor pet store. A clerk witnessed a white man in his 40s put a bunny worth $60 in his coat and walk out. The kidnapped rabbit was a white, lop-eared Holland bunny, TheOmahaChannel.com reports.

Police have arrested Michael Stiles, 39, who is accused of stealing the rabbit. However it seems that Stiles has pulled off a bit of a David Copperfield act: the rabbit has disappeared, the Journal Star reports — via redwolf.newsvine.com