Yes, I agree that for folks just getting their feet wet in blogs and wikis, a hosting provider is the way to go. Most have easy to use control panels and simple point-and-click installations of web software.

On the other hand, these shared hosting sites can be really slow and sometimes miserable to use.

If you want to experiment with blogs and you are new to the hold world of blogs, I highly recommend a free account on WordPress.com Get a Free Blog Here

WordPress has great software, many cool plugins, the site performs reasonably well, and there is good SEO out-of-the-box.