The strong, long-range interactions between Rydberg atoms may be an excellent means of producing entanglement between atoms at distances that are resolvable by conventional optics. In particular, using Rydberg states to block the production of multi-atom excited states appears promising for producing robust entanglement of atomic ensembles. I will present ideas for using Rydberg blockade to achieve single atom and single photon sources, teleportation, and fast qubit readout. I will describe an apparatus we have built at Wisconsin to try to investigate Rydberg blockade of qubit pairs and ensembles, and present results on addressable qubit manipulation. Preliminary experiments on Rydberg excitation will be described.