I have a lot of family and friends that don't belong to blogger so they don't keep track of when new posts are published but I think they would if they were emailed the posts... are there any free programs that do this anymore?
I also use feedburner. Its very easy to setup, allows anyone to subscribe/unsubscribe and reports on how many subscribers you have by both email and RSS.
Blogger can also email up to 10 people when you publish a post. Go to Settings on your Dashboard and then select "Email and Mobile". There is a box where you can type in email addresses.