ibn Mas’ud

A major upgrade of data to vast areas of Pakistan seems to be in the works by Google for Google Earth. Major cities included in the recent update include most notably Lahore and the Eastern part of Faisalabad. The resolution for these areas is apparently similar, if not on par with that of Karachi and Islamabad. The inclusion of Lahore and Faisalabad completes the top cosmopolitan cities of Pakistan with Karachi and Islamabad already been covered. For people interested in real estate in these major cities this update is greately helpful.

Other areas at first seem to be picked at random but everything seems to fall in place when one notices that most of the mountainous regions of Balochistan are also included in the update. Jacobabad, Sukkur, Rohri, Rahim yar Khan, Okara, Gujranwala are some of the other cities included too.

I have confirmed this but you may have to install the beta version of Google Earth to be able to view these places. I may be wrong. If you are able to view these places with the older version, please let me know.

The most reliable method to determine the direction of the Qibla is by looking at the Sun. Every year, because of the revolution of the Earth around the Sun and the inclination of the axis of rotation to the Ecliptic, the Sun is directly ABOVE THE KABAH only two times.

1. May 28 at 9:18 am (GMT) [12:18 pm local Makkah time], and
2. Jul 15 at 9:27 am (GMT) [12:27 pm local Makkah time].

Similarly, the Sun is BELOW THE KABAH (in Makkah) only two times.

1. Jan 13 at 9:29 pm (GMT) [00:29 am local Makkah time], and
2. Nov 28 at 9:09 pm (GMT) [00:09 am local Makkah time].

The direction toward the Kabah can be easily determined by finding the direction towards (or away from) the Sun at the instants when the Sun is ABOVE (or BELOW) the KABAH.

The Qibla direction would be TOWARDS THE SUN, at the instant WHEN THE SUN IS ABOVE THE KABAH. The Qibla direction would be AWAY FROM THE SUN, (in the direction of the SHADOW of a vertical rod) at the instant WHEN THE SUN IS BELOW THE KABAH.

The only obvious requirement is that the Sun should be visible at that instant. Nearly half of the world would be able to see the Sun at these times. The other countries would not be able to see the Sun, because the Sun would be below their local horizon, at those times.
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Google has quietly added support for two new languages, Arabic and Hebrew, a couple of days ago. They really seem poised to take over the web based email service catering to 40 different languages. They have specifically been targeting the arabic speaking world first adding arabic to english and english to arabic translation services and now arabic in gmail.