Daily Tech Snippet: July 11

• What is Pokémon Go and why is everybody talking about it?: This new Pokémon game is bringing augmented reality mainstream.It’s a new mobile game, free on both iOS and Android, that lets you create an avatar that can catch, train, trade and battle Pokémon characters inside the game. That sounds familiar. Isn’t that the premise of virtually every other Pokémon game? Yes, kinda. What makes this game unique is that it uses your phone’s location services and camera so that you can catch Pokémon in real life. That is, when you walk around the streets of whatever city or town you live in, your avatar moves inside the game. So finding new Pokémon and checkpoints for the game actually requires you to get off the couch and walk down the block. How does this work? The game uses Google Maps technology to place your avatar on a virtual world that mirrors your real life surroundings. When you find a Pokémon, the game uses augmented reality (AR) to make it look like whatever Pokémon you’ve stumbled across is indeed standing right there in front of you. Who created Pokémon Go? Nintendo and the other creators of Pokémon teamed up with Niantic Labs to create the game. The former company was born inside Google; its founder, John Hanke, was a key leader of its Geo products (Google Maps, Earth). After moving to leave Google in 2010, Hanke was lured to stay with funding for Niantic, a skunkworks project to build mobile AR tools using Google Maps technology. Niantic’s first effort, Ingress — an augmented-reality, massively multiplayer, location-based online game — cultivated a small but very dedicated following. Niantic spun out of Google in the fall, yet the search giant stayed involved, participating in a $30 million investment for developing Pokémon Go.

• Nintendo shares surge on Pokemon mobile game hopes: Shares of Japan's Nintendo Co soared more than 20 percent in early Tokyo trading on Monday, extending last week's gains, on hopes that the popularity of its new Pokemon GO smartphone game will boost its results. Pokemon GO was launched in the United States last week and shot to the No. 1 free app in Apple Inc's U.S. iTunes store. It was also launched in Australia and New Zealand, and is expected to be rolled out in Japan soon. Nintendo shares were up 23.5 percent at 20,085 yen ($199.32) each after earlier rising as high as 20,190 yen, their highest since November.

• Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos Is Barred From Running Lab for 2 Years: Federal regulators have barred Elizabeth Holmes, chief executive of Theranos, from owning or operating a medical laboratory for at least two years, raising new questions about the future of the embattled blood-testing start-up and its founder, once a Silicon Valley phenomenon. In a letter sent to Theranos that was made public on Friday, regulators said they were revoking the certification of its flagship laboratory in Newark, Calif., effective Sept. 5. They also said the laboratory would be prohibited from taking Medicare and Medicaid payments. The government scrutiny stemmed from questions about the effectiveness of Theranos’s technology and the way the company operated its labs. The company faces a fine of $10,000 for every day it is out of compliance with regulations, effective July 12. Such stern sanctions are “virtually unheard-of in my 40 years’ experience in the industry,” said David Nichols, president of the Nichols Management Group, a consultant to and operator of clinical laboratories. “I don’t see a path forward for the company.” What Theranos and Ms. Holmes will do next is not clear. The company said in its statement that it would continue to operate a laboratory it owns in Arizona, at least for now. But if the license of the California lab is indeed revoked, then Ms. Holmes and Theranos could not own or operate any laboratory, and the Arizona facility would also have to be shut, according to both Theranos and a spokesman for the regulator.

• Japan's Line sets top price for up to $1.3 billion IPO: Line Corp set the price for its initial public offering at the top of its marketing range, raising up to $1.3 billion, a regulatory filing showed on Monday, reflecting robust appetite for the Japanese messaging app firm. The company set the IPO price at 3,300 yen per share, compared with its book-building range of 2,900-3,300 yen. It had initially set the range at 2,700-3,200 yen but bumped it up last week. Including an over-allotment arrangement, Line will sell up to 132.8 billion yen ($1.3 billion) of shares. Line, owned by South Korea's Naver Corp, plans to list in New York on July 14 and in Tokyo the following day.