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Gmane is a mailing-list-to-news gateway. News here means good old USENET news, accessed via NNTP. Mail-to-news gateways have been built before, but gmane is interesting because it is bidirectional—you can post via usenet and have it funneled into the mailing list. You can also read and post via a the web using a threaded interface (example) or a blog-style interface (example) complete with RSS.

Gmane is focused on communications about free software, but it's also the most comprehensive cross-media threading system I've seen. The world will be a better place when conversations can start in email, move into mailing lists, web forums, and blogs, and provide access to the whole thread from any entry point.