Film and TV streaming service Netflix has launched in the UK and Ireland. It offers online access to television programmes and films via a wide range of devices, including tablets and mobile phones as well as computers, games consoles and internet-connected TVs.

The service currently costs £5.99 a month with a one-month free trial.

The number of active users who access Facebook every month via a mobile application has just passed 300 million, according to Benedict Evans from research company Enders Analysis.

He notes that Facebook announced 350 million mobile users in total a few months ago, from an overall total of 800 million users.

Mark Bridge writes:

With less than a fortnight until Christmas, it’s probably time to order the turkey and start thinking about gifts. What could be a better present than being given your very own mobile operating system?

That’s what’s happening over at HP, which is making its webOS software available to the open source community. The big question now is whether developers will respond with “lovely, just what I wanted” or a slightly embarrassed “oh, I’ve already got one of those.”

Location-based social network Gowalla is to close at the end of January, having been acquired by Facebook.

User data isn’t being transferred; Gowalla says it intends to provide an easy way for users to export this information.

Research company comScore has published details of mobile social media usage across France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom; the ‘EU5’.

The information, which comes from comScore’s MobiLens service, shows that the number of people accessing social networks on mobile devices in the EU5 region grew by 44% in the last year.