Personalised music videos set in Bondi

I’ve just found a new toy that can take me for a virtual run down the streets of Bondi anytime I like. It’s Google’s Arcade Fire tool.  You go to the site, type in an address of your choice – where you grew up, where you live now, where you fantasize about living – and it creates a music video just for you! 

Here's mine set in Sir Thomas Mitchell Road, Bondi Beach, the street of choice for people in the know. 

The interactive film by Chris Milk features the song, ’We used to Wait’. It connects with Google Maps to take you down the actual streets, changing from aerial to streetview, plants some trees in the middle of the road. What fun.

Windows pop up all over the screen, which is apparently a sneak preview of the new web using HTML 5.

Bondi Curmudgeon reckons he showed it to me six months ago, and I wasn’t even interested. Clearly he should have explained the Bondi connection rather than just sending me a link with the country town he grew up in featured heavily. (Yawns all round to that...)

You can even send a postcard to younger self with a message like I have here. It’s a bit clunky so there’s some spelling mistakes I couldn’t go back and fix, but you get the general idea.