Conference room convergence >BY SHIRA LEVINE, New Media Editor

Thanks to a new videoconferencing system from Compression Labs Inc., conference participants need only bring themselves to their meetings-no need for fax machines, notebook computers, telephones or Internet connections.

"If you look at the typical conference room of today, there's a variety of devices and equipment, all with different user interfaces," said Greg Bell, director of new business markets for San Jose-based CLI. "With the Lunar system, we've taken the capabilities of everything in the meeting room and combined it into one easy-to-use device.

The Lunar system features standards-compliant audio and videoconferencing capabilities, corporate local area network access, Internet access, integrated fax capabilities and full computer access to additional applications such as spreadsheet software and word processing.

The Internet access feature makes Lunar a particularly valuable tool, Bell said. For example, a user in one location can call up a Web page on the Internet, then display that page on a user's screen in another office. The Internet capability makes Lunar well-suited for Internet-based corporate training and education programs, Bell said.

While the first release of Lunar uses a local area network or POTS line to connect to the Internet, future versions will allow for an ISDN connection, he said.