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When starting a new mobile app in Appery.io Mobile App Builder, you get two choices. You can create a mobile app which is essentially a PhoneGap app, or a mobile web app which is pure HTML5, jQuery Mobile app. When going with a mobile web app, you can easily publish and host your app from Appery.io by clicking the Publish button.

You can create a subdomain such as mycoolapp.appery.io but can also use completely custom domain. This is an incredible feature because you can build the app in the cloud and then do one-click publish. Your app is published in about 3 minutes. Once the app is published, you can continue working and republish the app once the new release (new features) were added.

Mobile app hosting is included in the Pro plan and can be added as an option to the Standard plan for $10/m.

Lastly, if this sort of hosting is not your cup of tea, you can always export the app and host it anywhere else. Either way – it’s super easy and fast.

We recently pushed a new release of Appery.io Mobile App Buider and here are some of the most important new features.

PhoneGap 1.4

PhoneGap version was upgraded to the latest and greatest version 1.4. Every mobile app project automatically comes with PhoneGap 1.4 included, nothing you need to do. You can easily invoke any PhoneGap API and we also provide special Device palette with components based on PhoneGap API.

jQuery Mobile Ajax Navigation

This feature has been requested for some time and now it’s available. When defining page navigation, you can now select transition effect

New jQuery Mobile Visual Data Mapper

We have switched to a new and more powerful jQuery Mobile data mapping. To create mappings, simply select a variable and drag and connect to the other side. When you drag service variables into the page, the page nodes will automatically expand so you don’t necessarily need to open the page nodes ahead of time. The new mapper will allow us to expose all component properties and add additional powerful features.

HTML5 Audio Control

In addition to video control, we also just added HTML5 audio control:

Sign up and try Appery.io Mobile App Builder today.

We recently updated a number of help documents. Here is a summary of what has been updated:

• Roadmap and Release Notes – we promise to keep them up to date from now on!
• Building a Mobile App Connected to Parse.com Mobile Backend
• Using Video component
• Using Camera component
• Using Geolocation component
• Building and running iOS app on a mobile device
• Creating a dynamic drop down list with jQuery

As always, if you have any questions or would like to cover a topic in a new tutorial, let us know on the forum, on Twitter, Facebook, email, or right here.

ReadWriteMobile has posted an interesting Infographic created by Kinvey mapping the current mobile ecosystem (click on image to view larger version):

(Image source: http://kinvey.com/images/kinvey_backend-as-a-service_mobileecosystem_2100px.png)

First of all thanks to Kinvey for creating this wonderful map and including Appery.io in it (blue Mobile SDK line). Appery.io could actually span 3 different lines: BaaS, Mobile SDK and Mobile API. Appery.io is a cloud-based HTML5 mobile app builder, so it’s not exactly a mobile SDK. In fact, the technology under the hood is HTML, JavaScript and jQuery Mobile. For hybrid apps, the app can be wrapped in PhoneGap, which also provides access to native device features. So, there is no really “custom” SDK.

Second, from the builder it’s incredibly easy to consume any REST API (yellow Mobile API line). Appery.io comes with a pretty nice REST services console where any service can be tested. From the same console, the REST service response (structure) can be automatically created. Once the service is defined, it is mapped to jQuery Mobile UI using a visual mapper (UI to service input, service output to UI).

Thirdly, as most BaaS services (orange line) are exposed as REST, HTML5 mobile app built in Appery.io, can easily connect and use those services.

Lastly, and maybe the most important point is how incredibly fast you can build apps. It sort of all makes sense.. you got cloud-based mobile backend (exposed as REST) and cloud-based app builder to build the apps. It sounds simple.. but a really elegant picture.

This perfectly describes Appery.io. Appery.io is cloud-based builder for creating HTML5, jQuery Mobile, PhoneGap, and RESTful mobile apps.

Originally posted here.

Join our interactive webinar to learn how to build an HTML5 mobile app in Appery.io Mobile App Builder using back-end services provided by Parse. We will create and define mobile services we set up on Parse that are exposed via REST. Then, we will build an HTML5 app in Appery.io and show how to connect the app to these Parse REST services using a visual data mapper. Attendees will be able to try the app on their devices as it’s being built.

When: Thursday, February 23, 2012 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PST
Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/294792825

From a Tiggzi user:

One of the really great features in Appery.io mobile app builder is that you can quickly export the app as mobile Web, Android or iOS.

For Android, you can get a ready for the app market binary file (Release binary). Just take the file and upload it to Android Market. It’s that simple. You can watch a webinar where an app is built, exported for Android and published.

iOS is little bit more involved (Apple requires to provide your developer information to build). There are two ways to go about it. First, export the app as xCode project and then follow the steps outlined in this guide to build the app.

A second option is to use PhoneGap Build cloud service.

We are working on adding functionality where you will be able to build iOS app inside Appery.io.

We just published a new tutorial on how to build a mobile app in Appery.io connected to mobile backend hosted by Parse. Parse makes it super easy to create a mobile backend and expose it via REST. In Appery.io app builder, consuming any REST service is as easy.

Give it a try here.

The final app is shown on the left. The app shows a list of text messages, you can add and delete text messages.