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It was only a matter of time. Yes folks, you can now tweet the dead, using Twitter, the micro-blog messaging tool that seems to be on everyone's desktop and cell phone these days. Twitter works like this: you send a message of 140 characters or less, and those people who are subscribed to your "tweets" will see it. You can subscribe to anyone who tweets, and many celebrities use the service to communicate with their fans. Now, thanks to department store psychic Jayne Wallace, you can tweet the dead. And they'll answer.

How is this possible? On October 30, 2009, Jayne will take questions through twitter. Between now and then, she'll be taking nominations on which celebrities she should contact, and will select the top four. You'll be able to tweet your questions to her then, and get answers. You'll notice I didn't include instructions on how to get in touch with Jayne. She's so good at self-promotion that I don't think she needs my help.

It seems that every new technology has its own conduit to the dead. Tape recorders record the voices of the dead, lights flicker in ghostly code, telephones get calls from beyond the grave, cars, trains and ships long since rusted away still travel on misty nights, and so on. Now we can add Twitter to the list. I suppose I should expect a Skype poltergeist incident at any moment. How very boring.

But hey, it's still worth $1,000,000. If Wallace can talk to dead people on command as she is claiming, all she'd have to do is tell me about a conversation I had with my grandmother concerning the name of her cat. The cat had a very specific name, and for a specific reason. She's been dead since 1997, but Jayne should be able to look her up pretty easily in whatever directory she's using to find the celebrities.

Wallace's "Tweance" could be done in good fun, but it's not. She's using it to drum up clients for her psychic business. A quick look at her site reveals many different ways to give her money, which shows her true interest. Someone with the ability to talk to the dead could be of great use to historians, scientists, and police detectives, but Wallace prefers to spend her time taking readings for a fee at the back of a department store.  I think that says a lot.