To hyphen or not to hyphen

IMO - only hyphenate if it's a last resort.

Hyphenating helps SEO (as it's the same as a space).

Sometimes it hurts users (if they are at a level where they can't find the hyphen key on their computers).

Sometimes it helps users (by making the domain readable).

Here is my personal criterias for a domain (with some flexibility).

1) Memorable
2) Relevant (this is the keywords)
3) Short (this is a big part of memorable)
4) One word if possible (to avoid confusion, but this is HARD to get these days).
5) Starts with "a" (to get to teh top of directories that alphabetize)
6) Is a .com domain
7) Is "radio safe" (e.g. able2know isn't too "radio safe". If heard on the radio or in conversations it can cause "radio confusion" and people might think it's able2no or abletoono.......)
*) Is available (the hardest part)

I want to make a blog site, so it would be nameblog.com or name-blog.com

I don't know how searchs would handle it, cause I would want it to come up under "name" and under "blog" if they do either or a combination of both. I figure if users have blogs and some of them link to me, it would help with me getting relevant links, not all the blogs would have my link, that just wouldn't make sense. But I also wanted to attach the domain to a sub-domain, that wouldn't hurt would it? engines look at the url not the ip, right?

Yes, they look at the URL. For search engine purposes the hyphen will make little to no difference.

darn it, someone took nameblog.com, except they registered it in 2001, it expires 9/04 and currently they aren't doing anything with it. Should I take the hyphen name, which would give me the search queries I want or go with another name?

If that's the query you want, go for it.

it'll be some heavy comp if his site goes active though, hehe, it'll be a race.