Now that the Year 2000 has come and gone, "the future" has arrived. Here we are, trying to survive in a global economy, yet budget and time severely limit the amount of face-to-face contact we can have with long-distance clients and employees. Unfortunately, futuristic gadgets like holographic image-based conferencing are still not in sight.

Until beaming gadgets come on the market, you may want to give Web conferencing a try. This new technology allows you to combine phone presentations with live Web-based visuals from your computer in an environment where you can control what your audience sees. You'll no longer have to book an expensive and time-consuming flight each time you want to give a PowerPoint presentation or software demo to far-away folks.

Through Web conferencing, you can also conduct live polls, illustrate your point on an electronic whiteboard, give a Web site tour, and stream audio and video to any participants with an Internet connection.

Web conferencing can also be more interactive. Meeting participants can communicate via text-based messaging. Some companies can even support voice over IP, which lets you make calls through your Internet connection rather than a regular phone line. Participants, however, must have computers equipped with a sound card, speaker, and microphone.

To start Web conferencing, you will need a computer with an Internet connection (preferably something faster than a 28.8 kbps modem) and a recent version of a Web browser.

In most cases, you'll be able to register to set up a conference right from the Web conferencing company's site. Some popular companies currently include Astound, Inc. (astound.com), Placeware Inc. (placeware.com), Sneakerlabs Inc. (sneakerlabs.com), and WebEx Inc. (webex.com).

It can also affect your business if you use a toll-free number to access services such as a pager or voice mail service. These companies have responded by blocking calls made from pay phones or adding these charges to the bill.

As a toll-free number owner, if the pay phone calls you receive represent a cost you are unwilling to bear, you can ask your carrier to block these calls. Call blocking can come at a price, though. While some companies do it for free, others charge both a set-up and a monthly fee for this privilege.

In addition, not every long-distance carrier can support call blocking. If you want to avoid paying for pay phone calls, you'll need to switch carriers.

Any good news? Well, right now, not every pay phone is equipped to pass on these charges. But that reprieve won't last long -- all pay phones are mandated to be with the necessary tracking information by March 1998.

And there's a slim chance that this ruling may eventually be revoked -- an even more expensive surcharge from last year was eventually revoked, thanks to the long-distance companies' protests. The same long-distance companies are contesting the latest ruling.