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A deaf woman who claims she hasn’t been able to sell items on eBay Inc.’s ecommerce Web site has filed a lawsuit saying the Internet giant violates federal and California state laws that protect disabled people against discrimination. Getty Images A sign outside of the eBay headquarters in San Jose, Calif. The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, centers around eBay’s sellers registration system, in which the company places an automated phone call to would-be sellers and requires them to verify themselves over the phone. The plaintiff, Melissa Earll of Nevada, Mo., alleges that she cannot communicate vocally by telephone and hasn’t been able to verify her identity with eBay. She has tried to register on eBay numerous times since 2008 so she could sell dozens of rare books she has collected in local auctions and sales, said attorney Michael Aschenbrener of Edelson McGuire LLC. The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, also alleges the San Jose, Calif.-based company has steadfastly refused to offer her an alternative means to verify her identity despite repeated attempts. The lawsuit says eBay “has gone out of its way” to design a system that deaf and hard-of-hearing people cannot use.

A connection to the University of California at Berkeley–and a lengthy record for innovations–seem to be winning attributes in this year’s big computing prizes. Eric Brewer has both. Association for Computing Machinery Eric Brewer The Association for Computing Machinery on Monday is announcing that the Berkeley computer-science professor is the winner of the latest ACM-Infosys Foundation award. (The foundation set up by Infosys, a computer-services firm based in India, sponsors a $150,000 prize along with the award). Brewer, 43, is being recognized for his contribution to the development of “highly scalable Internet services.” That means breaking down jobs that once required large expensive server systems so they can be handled by many inexpensive, small machines–the way Google and other Web farms now routinely operate. That work was a key reason for the success of Inktomi, a search engine pioneer that Brewer co-founded in 1995 and was purchased by Yahoo in 2003. Adding more and more commodity-style servers based on x86 chips from the PC business “meant we could build a system that was bigger than any in existence,” Brewer says.

The “Twilight” saga, which seems to have just ended with the release of the second film in the series, “New Moon,” in November, is baaaaack . And, of course, the Internet is huffing and puffing over this one, “Eclipse,” set for June, since its trailer just came out. In the clip, it looks like Bella and Edward are still not together (as in not doing it). Good Lord, wasn’t that the plot of the last movie and the one before that? Plus, the Wolfman Kid is back, as part of the freaky love triangle. Then again, to be fair, Harry Potter is still battling Voldemort. The next movie in that series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the first of a two-parter, comes out in mid-November.

While there have surely been a lot of departures of talent at MySpace over the last year, including two major shifts in top management, one of the more interesting guessing games of late concerning the social networking company has been over the fate of well-known tech wunderkinds Hadi and Ali Partovi. According to many sources inside and outside the company, that’s just the discussion the pair of serial entrepreneurs has been having with its newest leaders, as well as with News Corp. (NWS) digital head Jon Miller. (News Corp. owns MySpace, as well as Dow Jones, which owns this site.) In all likelihood, said sources, the Partovis will remain at MySpace for the next several months, though they are likely to move eventually to more senior advisory or special-project roles there in order to pursue longtime outside investing and entrepreneurial interests. “They’re definitely staying for now,” said one source. “But it’s the ‘how’ is what’s being worked out.” There are many shifting scenarios as the sides hash it out, said sources, but MySpace execs are keenly interested in avoiding the appearance that the company is in the grip of a talent drain, especially with such high-profile innovators. Still, in an interview with BoomTown at MySpace’s Beverly Hills, Calif., HQ earlier this week (you can see part of that chat in the video below ), Co-President Jason Hirschhorn said that there are likely to be a lot more departures at the company, as well as arrivals

This is a report from our premium subscription research service The Internet Analyst.