7. A method for processing a voice command received by a portable electronic device using computing equipment that may communicate with the portable electronic device over a communications path, the method comprising: at the computing equipment, receiving the voice command and contextual information that is associated with an operational state of the portable electronic device over the communications path.
12. The method defined in claim 7 wherein the portable electronic device comprises an electronic device with media playback capabilities, wherein the portable electronic device was being used to playback a given media file when the voice command was received by the portable electronic device, wherein the voice command is associated with a request from a user to perform a media search, and wherein the contextual information comprises information about the given media file, the method further comprising: at the computing equipment, performing the media search using the information about the given media file.