Conversational portal for providing conversational browsing and multimedia broadcast on demand

A system for accessing information, comprising:

• an access device;
• a content server;
• and
• a conversational portal system comprising:
• a conversational browser that provides a conversational user interface to access the conversational portal system, wherein the conversational browser adapts an interaction dialog with the access device according to one or more modalities supported by the access device, and wherein the conversational browser can retrieve one or more pages from the content server in response to a request communicated from the access device and serve or present the retrieved pages to the access device in at least one format that is compatible with the one or more modalities supported by the access device;
• an audio indexing system for segmenting and indexing audio and multimedia data obtained from an information source according to a program specified by a user;
• and
• a multimedia database for storing the indexed audio and multimedia data,
• wherein the conversational portal maintains, for the user the program, wherein the program comprises portions of the indexed audio and multimedia data in the multimedia database in a predetermined order specified in the program by the user.

A method for providing access to information over a communications network, comprising the steps of:

• establishing communication with a conversational portal using an access device having at least one modality associated therewith;
• the conversational portal adapting an interaction dialog with the access device based on the at least one modality of the access device, wherein adapting the interaction dialog includes adapting the interaction dialog to an audio modality and a non-audio modality;
• maintaining, in a multimedia database of the conversational portal, indexed audio and multimedia data corresponding to a content page of a registered subscriber;
• retrieving, by the conversational portal, the indexed audio and multimedia data of the content page from the multimedia database according to a user specified program specifying an order in which portions of the indexed audio and multimedia data are played;
• and
• presenting or serving, by the conversational portal, the content page to the user in at least one format that is compatible with the at least one modality of the access device, wherein the at least one format comprises a multi-modal format that can be rendered in two or more synchronized modalities.