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So far there’s no easy way to follow the news our friends, colleagues or other people of interest make; short of regularly googling names or setting up a news alert. Now Newsle has been created to make this job a little bit easier.

Newsle works by importing your Facebook and LinkedIn friends list and then using a sophisticated algorithm to scour the web for news about people on your list or any additional names you input into the service.

At the moment Newsle is in private beta but so far analysts are impressed by its capabilities. It does good work of eliminating duplicate news items, selecting ‘important news’ items though including all relevant if potentially duplicated items in “all news”.

However it may not be that useful with respect to the long friends’ lists many people have on Facebook. The average man on the street is unlikely to pop up on news feeds at all. LinkedIn may prove a different matter as prominent people could end up in corporate news releases or other press items and keeping track of these could be useful in a business setting.

If LinkedIn and Facebook contents do not deliver much of interest keeping track of public figures might. Newsle makes it easy to add the names of public figures to your list in which case it does a good job of updating you with the latest on your favorite celebrity or whoever else you choose to follow.

Verizon will begin selling the iPhone to its customers later this week (probably tomorrow).  When they do, unlike AT&T, they’ll offer unlimited data plans to go with the phones.  The wireless carrier says they’ve got the network to handle it, thanks to recent upgrades and beef-ups.

AT&T, which has long been the exclusive carrier for the Apple devices, retorted that iPhone users on Verizon will be experiencing “Life in the Slow Lane.”  Of course, this is coming from AT&T who’s had a long history of network outages and data stream problems during its tenure as the iPhone’s exclusive carrier.

Of course, the unlimited plans on Verizon are likely just a sales gimmick since the company has already been on board with AT&T and others regarding tiered pricing.  That model makes sense, since it incentivizes uses to lessen network load and go easy on the data usage – charging those who do so anyway for the privilege.  Verizon already charges on a tier for 4G LTE access.

Verizon has a lot to worry about as well, in terms of PR.  They, more than any other, have built their reputation on their network and its reliability and speed.  They have wide coverage – often in areas the others don’t – and a large customer base.  Any problems with their iPhone coverage in the first few weeks could be disastrous for PR.

So only time will tell how all of this pans out, but one thing is very clear: this means competition in the iPhone market and that can only be a good thing for consumers.

It’s the turn of the New Year and so, traditionally, everyone who writes anything about tech has to make predictions for the coming year.  These are my own predictions for the 2011 year in technology.

Prediction #1: The melding of social and interest groups with commerce to create a new level of social-interest-based e-commerce.  Think of it as Match.com meets eBay, but without all of the dating and hidden shipping costs.  One of the companies on the forefront of this trend is Quora, which will probably have its day this year.

Prediction #2: Mobile social photo and video will meet geo-location and become the most popular way to not just “check in,” but to interact and share with social networks.  Photos can already be shared on check-in using Foursquare, but video has not really entered the geo-location scene.  That will probably happen this year as software catches up with most mobile devices’ ability to publish directly to sites like YouTube.

Prediction #3: A large number of people will be able to pay by cell phone.  Every major cell phone maker and many app-makers are focusing on mobile payments.  These allow your cell phone to become a sort of credit card, letting you purchase items at the store by using your phone rather than a card.  This will begin to really take off this year, I think, because big names like Apple and Google are already buying up companies that work on this technology.

Prediction #4: Streaming video will be available nearly everywhere on many devices.  This is a kind of no-brainer prediction, since it’s already happening now and only trending faster.  Streaming video is available on most cell phone platforms now, can be used on a few televisions (more are coming in 2011), and you can Netflix or YouTube just about everywhere it seems.  Up until now, though, this has really just been for the technological elites.  I see it coming to the masses in 2011 with tons of new devices entering Walmart and other common stores.

Prediction #5: You will become addicted to Rev2.  You will subscribe to the RSS feed and visit the site daily.  This prediction may not be much of a prognostication since you’ve probably already fulfilled it.  It’s fate.  Go with it.