Amazon coming to Australia to hold two talks in Sydney and Melbourne

In the past we`ve reported on Amazon possibly coming to Australia, well we`ve been advised by John Scott from the Android Australia User Group that Amazon will be visiting Australia in October, to give two talks and possibly recruit developers. Hit the break for more info.

Piragash Velummylum who is currently the Software Development Manager for Amazon Cloud Drive, is one of Amazon`s Technology leaders. He pitched and founded Amazon Cloud Drive, authored over 20 patents and won Amazon Hack Day. Piragash will be visiting Australia to deliver two Tech Talks, one in Sydney (Monday 10th October @ 6:30 PM) and the other in Melbourne (Sunday 16th October @ 7pm), at these talks he will outline the motivations, customer experience, architecture, scalability, and security of Amazon first consumer cloud product offering. You can RSVP for the Sydney Talk here or the Melbourne Talk here. So developers heads up, might be an idea to check out these talks.

The timing of this visit and looking at developers may tie in with what occured midnight Wednesday AEST, Amazon were holding an event to announce some new Kindle models in the US and one of the models they announced was the Android based Amazon Kindle Fire which will be available for $199 from November 21st. However, it is only available for pre-order if you live in the US, which makes sense since most of the Amazon content services such as the App Store, MP3 Store, Amazon Prime and Cloud Storage are currently restricted for use only to residents of the US, although it`s possible they`re ramping up for a wider release to other countries, judging by the recent, what seemed to be slipup which allowed access to the Amazon App Store to seemingly everyone.
Amazon Kindle Fire Specifications :

• Heavily customised version of Android 2.3
• 7″ IPS(In-Plane Switching) LCD Display @ 1024×600 : 169PPI with Gorilla Glass
• 1GHz dual-core OMAP 4 Processor
• 8Gb Internal Storage
• 512Mb RAM
• WiFi 802.11B/G/N
• BlueTooth 2.1 + EDR
• Micro-USB Port
• Battery Life up to 8 hours of continuous reading or 7.5 hours of video playback(4 Hour charge time)
• No Camera, No SD Card Slot, No HDMI Out
• 190 mm x 120 mm x 11.4 mm @ 413gms
• Access to Amazon Services including App Store, Amazon MP3 Store, Kindle Book Store, Cloud storage for all Amazon content & 30 Day trial access to Amazon Prime which offers videos you can stream or download, purchase or rent.

They did also announce some basic Kindle models, bear in mind that all prices listed in this post are in USD :

• $79 Ad-Supported Basic Kindle, $109 Ad-free Basic Kindle
• $99 Ad-supported Kindle Touch, $139 Ad-free Kindle Touch
• $149 Ad-supported Kindle Touch 3G, $189 Ad-free Kindle Touch 3G

Could the fact that Amazon are recruiting for developers in Australia mean that they are looking to make their cloud based services available to Australian users or are they just looking to incorporate some Aussie talent into their cloud services division in the US, what do you think?