Well, this is kind ot but the trend is to include less and less content in the feed to drive views and clicks, they are not dead per se but I find them less and less useful. Yahoo pipes did work for a time, but maintenance time and effort is just too much and I just stopped caring about most blogs fighting back.

Just doctor mc ninja I follow because it's awesome, but these days if there is not a third party maintained pipe and there is no content in the feed I just skip town.