The blog works great and is something I plan on continuing to use.
The reason I started using it was to publish announcement or notifications to users regarding minor things. Major announcements will still be made through the Newsletter. For two reasons: 1) Half or more of the users signing up for an account, opted out of the newsletter; therefore, how could they get notifications. 2) It seemed like overkill to send out a newsletter for minor things, such as changes in the image layout or readability, but I want users to know the site is actively being worked on and it is growing.
The only issue I have had so far is the uploading of images through an external blog writer (using the blog API). The image is uploaded to an odd folder and then doesn't show up in the blog entry. I also seem to have a problem with tagging the entry externally. I plan on investigating these issues and seeing what it comes of it.
Next on the road...for BrowSweat.com subscription services using Ubercart.
For Sugar-Pine.com, banner block or rotating banner images.
