KosherJava

The Bearing to Yerushalayim and Zmanim Map was recently updated to version 3.0. This new release adds a number of new features to the Zmanim Map version 2.0 update released in March 2010. The main change was updating the Google Map API version from the deprecated v2 to v3. This change increases performance and adds [...]

As mentioned briefly in the “Why Some Zmanim Never Occur” post, the Lubavitch Jewish Center of Anchorage, Alaska has an interesting davening direction question. As explained in the “Bearing to Yerushalayim and Zmanim Map” (additional technical information is available in the “Technical Information about the Bearing to Yerushalayim Map” post), there are two opinions about [...]

Question:Why do Some Zmanim Never Occur in Some Locations? (Developers Beware) Answer:While most people realize that the sun may not rise or set in the Arctic and Antarctic Circles (see the Star-K’s When Does One Pray When There Is No Day), many are not aware that some twilight dips will not occur during part of [...]

The availability of the Bearing to Yerushalayim and Zmanim Map was originally announced on December 30, 2007. At the time there were a number of bugs related to the Google Map API. These bugs were reported to Google and eventually fixed. Since that time, the only change was a minor JavaScript fix for IE. The [...]

A lookup tool for elevation lookup was added to the Zmanim Calendar Generator page. This service is courtesy of Jonathan Stott’s earthtools.org elevation webservice. This Elevation data currently only covers all of mainland Europe (between latitudes 35°N and 60°N and longitudes 35°E and 15°W) and all of the contiguous states of the United States of [...]

The Zmanim Calendar Generator now has a simple way to look up longitude and latitude information using the Google Maps API. To use this feature, click on the Google Maps icon to display the map (location centered on Bais Medrash Gevoha in Lakewood), find the location that you want to generate zmanim for, and click [...]

I slightly updated the Zmanim Calendar Generator to add some user input validation. Looking at the logs, I noticed that someone generated a calendar with the longitude and latitude of Lakewood, NJ (the default), with just the location label changed to Minneapolis, MN. I don’t know if the user was just testing, or just assumed [...]