If you have ever had the problem of how to acquire data from, for example, one or more RSS feed or Web site and then redistribute the results as, say, a WAP formatted RSS feed on your Web site then I have a solution for you: kitchi, a utility published by Peter Wallin.

Originally designed as a means for acquiring and uploading text for scrolling LED signs such as Betabrite, Alpha, and ProLite products, kitchi can also generate content for cell phones, text pagers, and Web sites.

Kitchi has a simple interface: The right-hand panel displays the error log and allows you to either start kitchi as a Windows service (available only in the paid for version) or start the software as a desktop application. The left-hand panel is a hierarchical tree for setting up kitchi configurations, which can be saved and loaded.

The root of the configuration tree is a place holder under which you can create named “folders” that enclose folders that group “data streams.” Data streams are folders that have subfolders for inputs, outputs, and schedules.

Each input, output, and schedule can have multiple definitions. So, for example, you might create a group of RSS inputs and have the result routed to a regular RSS output to be e-mailed, another formatted for WAP-supporting devices that is to be automatically uploaded to a Web site via FTP, and another to be sent to a COM port formatted for a ProLite LED sign.

A useful feature is that a specification of multiple inputs creates an output that has the results of each input sequentially merged.

The available input methods include RSS feeds, Web pages (if the page is formatted with delimiters of any kind you can specify them so that the data items are extracted), a local file, or custom input strings. Output formats include COM ports, FTP, local file, SMTP, and USB while Scheduling events can be timed (every x seconds, minutes, or hours), daily at a specific time, or on a specific date and time.

Obviously if you have an LED display to drive, kitchi is a great tool for grabbing useful information such as share prices from Web sites or headlines from newspaper RSS feeds, but it is equally useful for acquiring and processing content for Web sites and Web applications.

The documentation is, at present, a little sparse but much of kitchi’s functions are fairly obvious. Peter has plans to make major improvements and add features that will make kitchi much more powerful.

Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, columnist and blogger.