Dotnetweblogs in Visual Studio
Another approach to the blog reader dilemna is... Visual studio ;-)
You can easily customize the start page to include any dynamic content you want and why not Dotnetweblogs.
The start page is indeed a combination of XML and XSL, and it's quite easy to create a custom page with tabs, filtered content.
You have also the choice between a Feed tag to dynamically read the content if the server is online, or Data to read a static content.
For the Feed option, the content is cached so if the server is offline, you still have the cache.
What better than that, if you are using Visual Studio.
If you want to give a try read this excellent article on MSDN.