I read few posts lately of members looking for some blog module.
I'm just building my own blog web site using Ventrian New Article module and i must say:
it's an amazing module.
For only 24$ you get access to download many modules and also the the News Article module.

The News Article is very flexible, it allows to define your view using templates, you can create multiple dashboards
easily, for example showing all the articles of specific author in speicifc page (which is one of blogging requirement).

http://www.ventrian.com/

And just to throw my $.02 in, I like the private message module and was working on getting the icon under the forum user name wired up as I read this post.  ;)  Brad has some nice toys on there. I am also using his 'Where Are They?' module...good stuff.