The blogging experience has two parts. The first part is creating and maintaining a weblog. The second part is reading and keeping track of multiple weblogs using a dedicated program that works similar to a mail program.  Often referred to as RSS readers, feed readers, feed aggregators, news readers, or search aggregators,  these programs allows you to “subscribe” to various weblogs and not have to worry about what new information has been posted to each blog. The information will be pulled down and ready to read in the Newsreader at regular intervals, just like a mail program.  A special program is not required to read a weblog.  A weblog is always available through a browser.  But a specialized program is highly recommended.

I  recommend:

FeedDemon for Windows
NetNewsWire for Mac
GoogleReader for a  web-based reader.

The latest versions of mail clients like Outlook or Mac Mail have built in support for RSS as do many browsers.    There are also RSS  readers for tablets and smartphones.

(Updated Aug 10, 2011)