Thursday, March 30, 2006

Pray in the direction of Mecca using Google Maps

Naveed Chaudhry has created the Google Maps powered Qibla Locator to help Muslims around the world pray in the direction of Mecca each day since doing so, according to the Muslim faith, is obligatory. This mapping tool makes it really easy to find this direction. It uses spherical trigonometry to account for the shape of the earth to find the shortest distance between Mecca and the desired point. The direction is then shown on the Google Map as an overlay. To use the map, double click your location and click "go". Zoom in to see the polyline drawn over the map that shows you the direction you should be facing.

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7 comments:

Sami said...

Thanks for the info.
Would you please try the link to see if it works? It did not work for me.

Anonymous said...

The link works, but nothing happens on click...

Luistxo - Tagzania said...

I am surprised that this mash-up took this long to be conceived. It was like a quite logic application of the G Maps API.

Just testing, took a screenshot of the view above the London Central Mosque. Slightly wrong alignement, it seems.

mibazaar said...

If you look at the center of the map (or if you click anywhere in the map) there is/appears a polyline. The angle changes as you pan around. This polyline points to Mecca. Pan to Saudi Arabia and you will get a better idea, how this works. Very interesting piece of work.

Anonymous said...

Now I know which direction to flip the bird.

Naveed Chaudhry said...

Hi, I've updated the Qibla locator with built-in geocoding. You can now lookup any location in the US by address and any other place in the world by city and/or country name. Check it out here

naveed chaudhry said...

The Qibla Locator has a new home at qiblalocator.com