If you take a look at the footer of most Weblogs Inc. blogs such as Engadget you will see that the 5 most recent posts from various other Weblogs Inc. blogs are listed. Does this help a lot with SEO?
Yes this way if google happens to be checking the backlinks for the particular blog with the links it'll take it as a vote to the recent posts. Not to mention help them get listed in the google SERPS faster. Thank you
This is a big yes. Google loves those extra links with the title as anchor text. Every blog should have a few related posts linking to other posts.