The New York Daily News makes this sound more exciting than it really is: shopping from your sofa with a TV remote control. According to a spokesperson for the Electronic Retailing Association, "Interactive television is exploding. There's virtually no end in sight to the possibilities of improving the consumer's shopping experience."

Excuse me, "improving the consumer's shopping experience"? You mean, selling lots of products to brain-dead couch potatoes willing to make impulse buys as they flip through hundreds of cable channels?

One of the leaders in the trend toward interactive shopping via the TV, not surprisingly, is home shopping giant HSN, which has already lined up a number of brand name merchants like Wolfgang Puck, Nicole Miller and singer Patti Labelle. Other companies involved in the push to separate you from your dollars include QVC and Shop NBC.