LightPole users can make phone calls directly from numbers that appear in the client and send e-mails to friends about locations.

A service like Hotspotr's is better than simply using Google Maps on a mobile phone, Klein said. "Points of interest that are hyper local or transient in nature won't always show up in search," he said. "Our publishing partners are interested in events or services that won't show up in search." As an example, the owner of a coffee shop might want to offer a special deal on a given afternoon when the shop happens to be empty as a way of drawing customers. LightPole can support such a dynamic service that might let users find one-time deals like that.

Other initial services on LightPole come from Yelp, Yahoo, Mappyhour, Bathroom Diaries, Platial, Zvents and Heyday Books. End-users will have one LightPole client on their phones with multiple bookmarks of the various content feeds they use.

LightPole displays advertising on content pages, splitting revenue with publishers. Content publishers don't pay anything to distribute content via LightPole.

The startup faces a hurdle that has continued to plague most developers of third-party mobile software: Phone users rarely download new software to their phones. That means the individual content publishers that sign on to use LightPole will have to encourage their users to download and use the client.