Interactive music video offers personalized trip down memory lane

There are four browser windows in this screengrab: the starting browser, the character in the video always on the run, an aerial from Google Earth, and a Streetview look at my boyhood home (on Santa Ana Avenue in Fresno, Calif). The house is still yellow with white trim, I guess oddly fashionable after all these years.

Looking for a fun interactive mashup of technology, music and personal history?

A site called The Wilderness Downtown is showing off the power of Google's Chrome browser, Google Earth and Street View; and personalization using The Arcade Fire song "We Used to Wait" as a powerful trip down memory lane.

Background on the fun can be found at lemondrop.com but here's a quick how-to:

First, you MUST use the Google Chrome browser. Once equipped so, fire up The Wilderness Downtown site, type in the address of the home(s) you grew up in, then sit back and watch the magic of technology personalizing a music video by one of the hottest bands going. Smaller browser windows pop up here and there as the storyline progresses and your home shows up first in Google Earth, then Street View. Toward the end, you can type or draw in a personal postcard of your memories growing up in the house.

You can then send the postcard to The Wilderness Machine, which "brings it back to analog. Look for it on tour with the band in North America. If you're lucky enough to get someone's postcard from it, plant it. A tree will grow out of it."

All in all, pretty trick stuff, not only the technology tricks -- look closely as the character in the video seems to actually run through the streets of Google Earth toward your real house -- but the tools that help you share memories of time gone by.

I tried punching in my current address, but the impact wasn't the same as seeing the place I grew up, brought back to life in a strange way.

The video is part of Chrome Experiments, a collection of everyday folks stretching the fast-improving Chrome browser in new ways. I haven't seen any of the others but The Wilderness Downtown has set the bar high.