Abstract: A global speech user interface (GSUI) comprises an input system to receive a user's spoken command, a feedback system along with a set of feedback overlays to give the user information on the progress of his spoken requests, a set of visual cues on the television screen to help the user understand what he can say, a help system, and a model for navigation among applications. The interface is extensible to make it easy to add new applications.

Abstract: A method and apparatus to identify names, personalities, titles, and topics that are present in a repository and to identify names, personalities, titles, and topics that are not present in the repository, uses information from external data sources, notably the text used in non-speech, text-based searches, to expand the search terms. The expansion takes place in two forms: (1) finding plausible linguistic variants of existing search terms that are already comprehended in the repository, but that are present under slightly different names; and (2) expanding the existing search term list with items that should be there by virtue of their currency in popular culture, but which for whatever reason have not yet been reflected with content items in the repository.