To add my 2 cents worth for the Blog Module developers - the way that Scott's News Articles module puts the name into the Url is not some type of weird hack, it simply uses a feature of the Friendly Url Provider interface that is little used - which is, you don't have to use default.aspx when calling the friendly Url Provider.
Most module developers use the NavigateUrl() call to generate a DNN url, which is fine. But you can also call the friendly Url Provider directly yourself to generate a Url. You shoudl first check that FriendlyUrls are switched on, and if they are, get an instance of the loaded FriendlyUrlProvider and call this overload:
FriendlyUrl(tab as TabInfo, path as string, pageName as string)
tab - the tab you want the Url generated for
path - the default.aspx?tabId=nn&entryId=xx non-friendly path you wish to convert into a friendly Url
pageName - my-big-long-page-name.aspx
This will generate a friendly Url of /TabPath/tabId/nn/EntryId/xx/my-big-long-page-name.aspx
Note that this is part of any friendly Url provider - standard DNN or any other. You can do this in two lines of code using only DNN core code, no third party modules at all.
Incidentally, if you use my iFinity Friendly Url Provider the generated Url from the above call would be either:
/TabPath/EntryId/xx/My-Big-Long-Page-Name.aspx (using extensions)
/TabPath/EntryId/xx/My-Big-Long-Page-Name/ (using extensions)
It's a little know and undocumented feature that all module developers should be using!