The article is devoted to a well known book of Miłorad Pavić Khazar Dictionary. The discussed work is. unusual, as it merges literature with historical writing. As such, it presents an interesting alternative to traditionally understood historiography.

In the early days, consumption of multimedia content related with audio signals was only possible in a stationary manner. The music player was located at home, with a necessary physical drive. An alternative way for an individual was to attend a live performance at a concert hall or host a private concert at home. To sum up, audio-visual effects were only reserved for a narrow group of recipients. Today, thanks to portable players, vision and sound is at last available for everyone. Finally, thanks to multimedia streaming platforms, every music piece or video, e.g. from one’s favourite artist or band, can be viewed anytime and everywhere. The background or status of an individual is no longer an issue. Each person who is connected to the global network can have access to the same resources. This paper is focused on the consumption of multimedia content using mobile devices. It describes a year to year user case study carried out between 2015 and 2019, and describes the development of current trends related with the expectations of modern users. The goal of this study is to aid policymakers, as well as providers, when it comes to designing and evaluating systems and services.

The article presents a framework for integrating historical sources with elements of the geographical space recorded in unique cartographic materials. The aim of the project was to elaborate a method of integrating spatial data sources that would facilitate studying and presenting the phenomena of economic history. The proposed methodology for multimedia integration of old materials made it possible to demonstrate the successive stages of the transformation which was characteristic of the 19th-century space. The point of reference for this process of integrating information was topographic maps from the first half of the 19th century, while the research area comprised the castle complex in Kórnik together with the small town – the pre-industrial landscape in Wielkopolska (Greater Poland). On the basis of map and plan transformation, graphic processing of the scans of old drawings, texture mapping of the facades of historic buildings, and a 360° panorama, the source material collected was integrated. The final product was a few-minute-long video, composed of nine sequences. It captures the changing form of the castle building together with its facades, the castle park, and its further topographic and urban surroundings, since the beginning of the 19th century till the present day. For a topographic map sheet dating back to the first half of the 19th century, in which the hachuring method had been used to present land relief, a terrain model was generated. The transition from parallel to bird’s-eye-view perspective served to demonstrate the distinctive character of the pre-industrial landscape.

In recent years the application of computer software to the learning process has been found to be an indisputably effective tool supporting the traditional teaching methods. Particular focus has been put on the application of techniques based on speech and language processing to the second language learning. Most of the commercial self-study programs, however, do not allow for introduction of an individualized learning course by the teacher and to concentrate on segmental features only. The paper discusses the use of speech technology in the training of foreign languages' pronunciation and prosody and defines pedagogical requirements for an effective training with CAPT systems. In this context, steps taken in the development of the intelligent tutoring system AzAR3.0 (German ‘Automat for accent reduction’) in the scope of the Euronounce project (Cylwik et al., 2008) are described with the focus on creation of the linguistic content. In response to the European Union's call for promoting less widely spoken languages, the project focuses on German as a target language for native speakers of Polish, Slovak, Czech, and Russian, and vice versa. The paper presents the design of the speech corpus for the purpose of the tutoring system and the analysis of pronunciation errors. The results of the latter provide information which is important for Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) training on the one hand, and for automatic error detection and feedback generation on the other hand. In the end, Pitch Line software for implementation in the prosody visualization and training module of AzAR3.0 tutoring system is described.

Multimedia networks utilize low-power scalar nodes to modify wakeup cycles of high-performance multimedia nodes, which assists in optimizing the power-toperformance ratios. A wide variety of machine learning models are proposed by researchers to perform this task, and most of them are either highly complex, or showcase low-levels of efficiency when applied to large-scale networks. To overcome these issues, this text proposes design of a Q-learning based iterative sleep-scheduling and fuses these schedules with an efficient hybrid bioinspired multipath routing model for largescale multimedia network sets. The proposed model initially uses an iterative Q-Learning technique that analyzes energy consumption patterns of nodes, and incrementally modifies their sleep schedules. These sleep schedules are used by scalar nodes to efficiently wakeup multimedia nodes during adhoc communication requests. These communication requests are processed by a combination of Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO) & Genetic Algorithm (GA) models, which assist in the identification of optimal paths. These paths are estimated via combined analysis of temporal throughput & packet delivery performance, with node-to-node distance & residual energy metrics. The GWO Model uses instantaneous node & network parameters, while the GA Model analyzes temporal metrics in order to identify optimal routing paths. Both these path sets are fused together via the Q-Learning mechanism, which assists in Iterative Adhoc Path Correction (IAPC), thereby improving the energy efficiency, while reducing communication delay via multipath analysis. Due to a fusion of these models, the proposed Q-Learning based Iterative sleep-scheduling & hybrid Bioinspired Multipath Routing model for Multimedia Networks (QIBMRMN) is able to reduce communication delay by 2.6%, reduce energy consumed during these communications by 14.0%, while improving throughput by 19.6% & packet delivery performance by 8.3% when compared with standard multimedia routing techniques.

The fundamental importance of cartographic signs in traditional maps is unquestionable, although in the case of multimedia maps their key function is not so obvious. Our aim was to search the problem of cartographic signs as a core of multimedia maps prepared by non-cartographer in on-line Map Services. First, pre-established rules for multimedia map designers were prepared emphasizing the key role of the cartographic signs and habits of Web-users. The comparison of projects completed by a group of designers led us to the general conclusion that a cartographic sign should determine the design of a multimedia map in on-line Map Services. Despite the selection of five different map topics, one may list the general characteristics of the maps with a cartographic sign in the core.

In the age of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Web and the Internet have changed significantly the way applications are developed, deployed and used. One of recent trends is modern design of web-applications based on SOA. This process is based on the composition of existing web services into a single scenario from the point of view of a particular user or client. This allows IT companies to shorten the product-time to market process. On the other hand, it raises questions about the quality of the application, trade-offs between quality factors and attributes and measurements of these. Services are usually hosted and executed in an environment managed by its provider that assures the quality attributes such as availability or throughput. Therefore, in this paper an attempt has been made to perform quality measurements towards the creation of efficient, dependable and user-oriented Web applications. First, the process of designing service-based applications is described. Next, metrics for subsequent measurements of efficiency, dependability and usability of distributed applications are presented. These metrics will assess the efforts and trade-offs in a Web-based application development. As examples, we describe a pair of multimedia applications which we have developed in our department and executed in a cluster-based environment. One of them runs in the BeesyCluster middleware and the second one in the Kaskada platform. For these applications we present results of measurements and conclude about relations between quality attributes in the presented application development model. This knowledge can be used to reason about such relations for new similar applications and be used in rapid and quality development of the latter.