How has Social Media Changed Company Policies? | SocialSpark

The Internet has, without a doubt, changed numerous aspects of modern life. We shop online, we date online and we communicate with friends online. What?s more, it has transformed modern businesses, enabling employees to work more effectively.

However, the Internet also gives workers more opportunities to procrastinate. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are just three of the many social networks that could distract employees from completing tasks, by chatting with friends on Facebook, following the latest news on Twitter or even looking for a new job on LinkedIn.

As a result, companies all around the world have been forced to either adapt or create policies that guide employees in how to go about their daily business. While some companies are as strict as possible and insist that employees do not log on to any social networking sites during working hours, others allow employees to visit these sites on their lunch break or in between tasks.

Social Media Company Benefits

Some companies even recognize that social networking sites, particularly Twitter and LinkedIn, can provide company benefits. With Twitter often breaking news, employees can follow industry-specific developments, as well as industry thought leaders that offer great recommendations, advice and innovative insight.

LinkedIn can also be beneficial because the site?s industry discussion groups often provide intellectual stimulation and new ideas that employees can integrate into their own work. Also, for companies with profiles, LinkedIn can provide alternatives to formal training programs. For example, online seminars provide a creative and interactive learning environment that can help employees continue their training ? all from their office desk. In the current financial environment, this is an attractive alternative to costly and timely formal training programs and conventions.

However, while saving on training expenses is one of the business perks of LinkedIn, many businesses are cautious of the fact that, through following rival companies on LinkedIn, staff could become aware of employment opportunities at these companies. Not only could employees read a full job description, but it is possible that they could go as far as submitting an application, using their LinkedIn profile to build their application form in a matter of minutes.

It?s a Fine Line

Clearly, companies around the world need to be wary about how they control employee Internet usage. Too strict, and they could risk pushing strong workers away and losing them to rival organizations. Not strict enough and they could find some employees taking advantage of company policy ? completing only the minimum amount of work required and spending large amounts of their working days online, talking to friends and eating up valuable company time.

About the Author: Sebastian is a Learning and Development Consultant at the leading project management training consulting company, Thales Training & Consultancy. With a background as a corporate presenter and trainer, Sebastian specializes in behavioral change and emotional intelligence. He is also a qualified MSCEIT practitioner.

Tags: Sebastian Bos, Thales Training & Consultancy

Source: http://socialspark.com/how-has-social-media-changed-company-policies/

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Apple releases iOS 7 beta for iPad and iPad mini

The just-released iOS 7 beta 2 has now hit Apple's developer portal and the big news is -- an iPad version is now available for download alongside the iPhone and iPod touch version. Two weeks ago, at WWDC 2013, Apple released iOS 7 beta 1 but restricted it to iPhone and iPod touch only, saying an iOS 7 beta for iPad would coming in the following weeks.

Looks like those weeks have followed. If you're an iPad developer and you've been waiting on it, go get it at developer.apple.com.

• iOS 7: Everything you need to know
• iOS 7: Discussion forum

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/CdSjPdP-oSs/story01.htm

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Religious advice should not involve political interest ... - Minivan News

The Maldivian public are often misinformed of authentic Hadiths (sayings of the Prophet) because some local scholars offer religious advice with the intention of serving their political interests, former President Mohamed Nasheed said last night (June 23).

Speaking at a ceremony at the Male? City Hall to launch a second volume of Dhivehi translation and interpretations of Sahih Muslim?s Hadiths by former State Minister for Islamic Affairs, Sheikh Hussain Rasheed Ahmed, Nasheed said genuine religious advice should not involve personal interest or a political ?agenda.?

While a politician might present statistics in a way that would favour his party, ?religious advice should not be given in a way that would benefit a political ideology.?

One of the biggest problems facing the country today was the ?mixing up? of politicians and religious scholars, Nasheed added.

The Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) presidential candidate said Sheikh Hussain Rasheed?s book should be made widely available for the public so that Maldivians could distinguish between inauthentic and authentic Hadiths.

The Hadiths were compiled by Imam Bukhari and Muslim during the Abbasid caliphate, Nasheed observed, which was a ?golden age? for Islam and the pursuit of knowledge.

?It is said that there were 700 libraries in Baghdad during that period,? he said.

Sheikh Rasheed?s second volume of Hadith translations are available for MVR 250 (US$16).

The former Adhaalath Party President?explained at last night?s ceremony that the complete translations of the 5,263 sayings would be published in a planned 12 volumes.

Parts two and three of Sheikh Rasheed?s books on prayer instructions were also released last night by former Islamic Minister Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari and Speaker of Parliament Abdulla Shahid.?

Source: http://minivannews.com/society/religious-advice-should-not-involve-political-interest-says-nasheed-60131

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Russian rights group evicted from Moscow office

By Steve Gutterman

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Authorities forcibly evicted a prominent Russian human rights organization from its office in the early hours of Saturday in a raid its director said he believed was ordered by officials in President Vladimir Putin's administration.

For Human Rights is one of the best-known of the hundreds of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which have been subjected to state inspections under a law Putin signed last year requiring NGOs with foreign funding to register as "foreign agents".

Western powers and rights groups view the legislation and inspections as aimed at intimidating activists and silencing criticism of Putin, who started a new six-year term in May 2012.

Putin, who has accused Western governments of using NGOs to spy on Russia and influence the political situation, says the law is needed to ensure transparency and that the checks are to enforce legal compliance.

The U.S. ambassador Michael McFaul tweeted on Saturday that "the USA is concerned about reports of the forcible seizure of the office of the NGO For Human Rights," adding that this was "another case of intimidating civil society".

Riot police and Moscow mayor's office representatives entered the building housing the office of For Human Rights at about 2 a.m. (2200 GMT Friday), ejecting at least six employees and supporters, said the group's director, Lev Ponomaryov.

"They treated us very roughly. I was dragged across the floor and then kicked," the 72-year-old said by telephone. He said he and five others were taken by ambulance to a first-aid clinic with bruises and scrapes, but none were in hospital.

A Moscow government property official, Maxim Gaman, told state-run news agency RIA on Friday that For Human Rights was being evicted because its lease on the city-owned premises had run out in February and had been terminated on May 27.

A police spokesman said officers had been sent to help city officials evict the group because its lease had run out.

About a dozen people gathered to protest outside the building on Saturday, undisturbed by the police.

FOREIGN AGENT LAW

Ponomaryov said the group had not received an eviction notice. He said the eviction may have been motivated by the group's refusal to give prosecutors documents they had demanded under the foreign agent law.

"I don't know if Putin is behind it but there must have been a decision at a very high level, in the Kremlin," he said. He also blamed Kremlin-appointed mayor Sergei Sobyanin for the eviction.

The presidential press service declined to comment, and Sobyanin's office could not immediately be reached.

The Moscow division of Russia's Interior Ministry on Saturday defended the actions of the police, saying the removal of the employees had been carried out by a private security firm, with police officers only involved in maintaining order outside the building.

Ponomaryov said he had expected to extend the lease as he had done in previous years, and that he was up to date on rent payments. "It's all entirely illegal," he said, adding that a court decision was required to carry out an eviction.

Russia's human rights ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, said city and law enforcement authorities had "tried to resolve a dispute between two parties unilaterally without involving the courts".

He said he had been barred from the scene of he raid in what he called a "crude violation of federal constitutional law", Interfax news agency reported.

Interfax also reported that a special meeting of the Kremlin's Human Rights Council would be held on Wednesday to discuss the incident, with Mayor Sobyanin and the heads of the Moscow police and prosecutors invited to attend.

(Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Jason Bush and Pravin Char)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/russian-rights-group-evicted-moscow-office-094115267.html

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Surgeon Uses Google Glass and iPad To Capture Live Procedure and Stream It

I'm torn on that one.

On the one hand, good. Patients deserve to KNOW if their doctor fucked something up. Every now and then you hear horror stories about sponges, clamps, and god knows what else being left inside a patient, or a doctor that removes the wrong body part. Video playback could also help in a malpractice defense in which the patient claimed the doctor was distracted, intoxicated, or made a critical error.

On the other hand, knowing that there's a camera and live feed watching your every move isn't something I'd want to deal with while I was elbow deep in someone's gizzard.

The act of observing something changes the behavior of the people being observed. I'm not sold on this, save in particular training circumstances.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/aSRw5s2OZgg/story01.htm

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Analysis: Oracle's sales miss magnifies fears about cloud missteps

By Jim Finkle

BOSTON (Reuters) - "What the hell is cloud computing?" Oracle Corp Chief Executive Larry Ellison said during a diatribe against the whole concept at an investor Q&A in 2008.

Asked to describe his strategy for expanding into a then-small but rapidly expanding sphere, the software giant's head said he had no idea what people were talking about when they referred to cloud computing, describing it as "nonsensical" and those writing about it as "insane".

Five years after Ellison's rant went viral on YouTube, the billionaire is struggling to fit his ageing IT giant into a newly cloud-centric world - a hard scramble spotlighted by what analysts said was Oracle's first fourth-quarter miss on new software sales in a decade.

Its rivals have grown, winning business from corporate and government customers seeking cloud-based software that is cheaper and faster-to-deploy than traditional offerings housed in massive inhouse datacenters.

Oracle is now striving to catch up with its own line of cloud software, built up partly through acquisitions. Ellison has forged alliances with long-time bitter rivals Microsoft Corp and Salesforce.com Inc to drum up new business. On Thursday, Ellison said he will announce those partnerships next week, but provided few details.

Oracle stuck for years to building high-end multi-million dollar "engineered systems" that bundle hardware and software in one package. It started selling them with Hewlett-Packard Co in 2008 and then partnered with ailing computer maker Sun Microsystems, which it agreed to buy in 2009.

Oracle says the engineered systems strategy has been a big success, helping woo business from rivals IBM and SAP

"They spent the last four years focusing on engineered systems when the bigger industry trend was the cloud," JMP Securities analyst Pat Walravens said. "They now have a structural problem."

Oracle's shares plummeted 9.3 percent on Friday, their biggest one-day drop since releasing another weak set of results in March.

Investors took the disappointing results hard because it was the first time in more than a decade that Oracle missed software sales estimates in its traditionally strongest fiscal fourth-quarter, according to analysts. That's when sales representatives hustle to close deals to qualify for year-end bonuses.

And it was the third miss in the past seven quarters for Oracle, Walravens said.

Cloud companies such as Salesforce price their products below the levels at which Oracle can make a decent return, analysts say. Some rivals even sell their products at a loss. Salesforce, for example, posted a net loss of $270 million last year.

Less quantifiably, industry executives have said that emergent business software providers such as Workday started from scratch by focusing on ease of use and simpler interfaces, while old-school IT giants like Oracle have been hampered by legacy systems and software products that they were slow to re-tool.

"This is causing a real disruption in Oracle's business," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer with Solaris Group, which manages about $1.5 billion. "It is going to pressure their business for a while."

SAILING ALONG?

Ellison, a renowned sailing enthusiast who is now devoting time and energy to his company's entry in this summer's Americas Cup, built Oracle from a scrappy operation building a database for the Central Intelligence Agency into one of Silicon Valley's foremost corporate icons.

In past months, he has championed Oracle's resurgent foray into cloud software, at his annual Oracle OpenWorld conference for clients and developers, even while continuing to buy up assets in Hawaii, such as commuter airline Island Air. He bought almost all of the island of Lanai last year.

He and Oracle executives dispute the view that the company is failing in the cloud. They blamed their quarterly miss on the economy, particularly in Asia and Latin America, during a conference call on Thursday.

In the previous quarter, executives blamed disappointing software revenue on poor execution by its salesforce.

"Our success in the cloud is significant and undeniable," Oracle President Mark Hurd said on a Thursday conference call with analysts. He said Oracle had added 500 new customers during the quarter including eBay Inc , Intuit Inc and Yahoo Inc .

Fred Hickey, editor of The High-Tech Strategist, a newsletter widely read by investors, said he does believe a bad economy was behind Oracle's rough quarter, pointing to problems in Brazil, China, India and Mexico and similar comments from other old-guard tech giants including EMC Corp , IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co .

Even up-and-coming cloud software provider Workday had mentioned "economic pressures" in its earnings conference call.

Other analysts said Oracle's installed user base - forged over decades in the business on a reputation of reliability - will be hard to displace in the short term.

"Does Oracle have pressure from the cloud over time? Yes," said Hickey. "Is it imminent? No. They are too big and entrenched."

Cowen & Co analyst Peter Goldmacher, who describes 68-year-old Ellison as "the most brilliant enterprise software person ever," also said that Oracle's problems are structural. He believes there is little Ellison could have done to avoid the slowdown the company is now seeing.

Ellison has grown profits at a healthy clip over the past decade by acquiring other makers of software that customers run in their own data centers, selling customers software up front and then cajoling them into buying long-term maintenance contracts that are highly profitable for Oracle.

That business model does not work with cloud computing because companies like WorkDay and Salesforce do not charge extra for maintenance. The cost of the software and support is combined into a single subscription fee, which generates far lower margins than the products Oracle has traditionally sold.

"The inevitable is the inevitable," Goldmacher said. "You can get as many tummy tucks and face lifts as you as want, but it doesn't make your heart and liver and kidneys any younger."

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Edwin Chan, Patricia Kranz, Martin Howell and Tim Dobbyn)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-oracles-sales-miss-magnifies-fears-cloud-missteps-120605766.html

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These Are the Ten TV Shows That Pirates Like the Most

With the spring TV season drawing to a close (MAD MEN SEASON FINALE TOMORROW YOU GUYS!!), TorrentFreak has done the wonderful service of rounding up a top 10 list of the most torrented shows out there this time around. Can you guess number one? (You can definitely guess number one.)

Read more...

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/yRWCg89Pisg/these-are-the-ten-tv-shows-that-pirates-like-the-most-543716912

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LeBron leads Heat to second straight title

MIAMI (AP) ? LeBron James and the Miami Heat remain atop the NBA, and not even a proud push from the San Antonio Spurs could knock them down.

James led the Heat to their second straight NBA title, scoring 37 points and grabbing 12 rebounds in a 95-88 victory Thursday night in a tense Game 7 of the NBA Finals that lived up to its billing.

Winning the title they needed to validate the best season in franchise history ? and perhaps the three-superstar system they used to build it ? the Heat won the second straight thriller in the NBA's first championship series to go the distance since 2010.

James continued his unparalled run through the basketball world, with two titles and an Olympic gold medal in the last 12 months.

He made five 3-pointers, defended Tony Parker when he had to, and did everything else that could ever be expected from the best player in the game.

The Heat became the NBA's first repeat champions since the Lakers in 2009-10, and the first team to beat the Spurs in the NBA Finals.

Players and coaches hugged each other after the game, the respect between the franchises that was obvious when the series started becoming even more apparent after two straight classics.

Fans stood, clapped and danced across the final minutes, when every score was answered by another score, each stop followed by a better stop. The Heat pushed their lead to six points a few times midway through the fourth but the Spurs would never be deterred.

The Spurs, so close to a fifth title just two nights earlier, couldn't find a way to grab it in this one, perhaps the last shot Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili will ever get together.

They were trying to become the first road team to win a Game 7 on the road since Washington beat Seattle in 1978, but those old guys ran out of gas just before the finish.

Duncan had 24 points and 12 rebounds for the Spurs, but missed a shot and follow attempt right under the basket with about 50 seconds left and the Spurs trailing by two.

James followed with a jumper ? the shot the Spurs were daring him to take earlier in the series ? to make it 92-88, sending San Antonio to a team a timeout as Glenn Frey's "The Heat is on" blared over the arena's sound system.

He then came up with a steal and made two free throws for a six-point lead, and after Ginobili missed, James stalked toward the sideline, knowing it was over and he was the last one standing again.

Dwyane Wade had 23 points and 10 rebounds for the Heat, who overcame a scoreless Chris Bosh by getting six 3-pointers and 18 points from Shane Battier.

Streamers fell from the arena ceiling onto the white-clad fans for the second year in a row, but this one meant so much more after how close the Heat were to losing it.

They were down 10 in the fourth quarter of Game 6 before James led the charge back, finishing with a triple-double in Miami's 103-100 overtime victory. This one was nearly as tight, neither team leading by more than seven and the game tied 11 times.

Kawhi Leonard had 19 points and 16 rebounds for the Spurs, who had been 4 for 4 in the championship round. Manu Ginobili had 18 points but Parker managed just 10 points on 3-of-12 shooting.

The Heat collected the Larry O'Brien again from Commissioner David Stern, presiding over his final NBA Finals before retiring next February.

James avenged his first finals loss, when his Cleveland Cavaliers were swept by the Spurs on 2007. That helped send James on his way to South Florida, realizing it would take more help to win titles that could never come alone.

He said he would appreciate this one more because of how tough it was. The Heat overpowered Oklahoma City in five games last year, a team of 20-something kids who weren't ready to be champions yet.

This came against a respected group of Spurs whose trio has combined for more than 100 playoff victories together.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lebron-leads-heat-second-straight-title-035241582.html

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Danielle Bradbery: Signed to Taylor Swift's Record Label!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/06/danielle-bradbery-signed-to-taylor-swifts-record-label/

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Iranian expectations soar after Rohani's election

As Iranians erupted in celebration over the victory of Hassan Rohani, they knew what they wanted from their president-elect: more social freedoms, a better economy, and less ?resistance? to the rest of the world.

The centrist cleric has promised them as much. But Iranian politics are an unruly tangle in which moderate agendas have often been wrecked by hard-line factions. Will Mr. Rohani be able to bring change without upending the Islamic Republic? Has this regime insider ? who declared in 1999 that student protesters ?would be punished as corrupt on earth who waged war on God? ? learned lessons from those chaotic days and those of the 2009 Green Movement protests? And will he have the mettle to achieve the promised transformation?

?It will be challenging for Rohani to make changes. People need to be more patient; they cannot expect to see immediate results,? says Azadeh, an engineer and mother in central Tehran who asked that only her first name be used. ?It?s not just up to the president. But because he is a strong personality and has a lot of support from influential politicians, he can succeed.?

Rohani was able to defeat the five conservative candidates in a surprise first-round win because of endorsements from two reformist former presidents: Mohammad Khatami, who won landslide victories in 1997 and 2001 on promises of change, and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Their support ? and their apparent faith in an electoral process that many Iranians had given up on after the fraud-tainted 2009 vote ? swept Rohani to what he called a ?victory of wisdom and moderation? over extremism, although he remains close to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

?People want more freedom and civil rights and economic prosperity,? says a bearded musician in Tehran who plays classical Persian music. ?I think that even with the factions within the establishment, Rohani will be able to fulfill his promises because the [ruling system?s] goal right now is to calm society.?

MIXED RECORD

Even though Rohani took an uncompromising line against pro-democracy protesters in 1999, his own children are believed to have links to the opposition Green Movement activities, as do the offspring of many senior officials.

Rohani never spoke out about the protest and crackdown in 2009, but he says he will work to release Green Movement leaders and former presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi from house arrest.

?In the suppression of the Green Movement, Rohani did not stand up for protesters,? notes Azadeh. ?Maybe it was his tactic to save face to become a presidential candidate. But let?s see what he does in the future.?

Those events were a learning experience for Rohani and to a degree Mr. Khamenei, reflected in his call just days before the election for those ?who don?t want to back Islamic system? to vote anyway, for the nation.

Rohani has promised a ?civil rights charter? and has spoken frequently about broader political and social rights and less government interference in people?s lives. The conservative establishment has lined up to praise his victory, and police have clearly been ordered not to prevent street celebrations.

?These are signs of wisdom, that they have learned from the previous mistakes,? says an Iranian analyst in Tehran. ?There is this strange capability of the Islamic regime for survival. Under tremendous pressures they get very close to the precipice, and something happens and they turn back ... to avoid very, very big disasters.?

?I don?t think Hassan Rohani is faking it,? says the analyst. ?The question is, will he make it? Will he be allowed ? or will he be able ? to have room enough to do that??

BALANCING ACT

The answer may depend on how Rohani balances competing pressures. He knows many Revolutionary Guard commanders from his role managing the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, but he is also close to figures like Mr. Rafsanjani, who were pilloried by hard-liners for fomenting the 2009 ?sedition? that shook the regime to the core.

?There has always been some apprehension about [Rohani] in the security and intelligence establishment, about his hard-line credentials being insufficient on national security,? says an Iranian political scientist in Washington. ?So he?s going to have some problems with those guys, no matter what.?

His tough approach to the 1999 student uprising came amid fear of ?chaos and a real collapse of the system,? says the academic. ?That position does not necessarily repudiate the overall moderate orientation [today]. The time was different, and of course [Rohani] has grown and changed.?

As for chances of a resurgence of the vigilante groups that were active during the Khatami era, and deployed in the 2009 crackdown?

?There is a growing sense among even hardcore conservatives that those tactics are no longer paying off or could be deployed,? says the political scientist. ?I?m not ruling out the possibility of those vigilantes regrouping and starting again; that depends very much on how Rohani reacts and how Rohani plays the game.?

The Monitor correspondent and sources have been left unnamed for security reasons.

Related stories

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iranian-expectations-soar-rohanis-election-144530559.html

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Ukraine's finance ministry denies "drunk" claims against minister

KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine's finance ministry denied on Thursday allegations by opposition politicians that a deputy finance minister had been drunk when he spoke to parliament on the budget this week.

Anatoly Myarkovsky, first deputy finance minister, had been suffering from high blood pressure, it said in a statement.

A parliamentary hearing was suspended on Tuesday after opposition deputies denounced Myarkovsky as drunk after he had presented a report on the 2012 budget.

"All the accusations are unjustified and unfounded," it said, adding that doctors had diagnosed him with "arterial hypertension" and he had been treated in hospital.

On Tuesday, Myarkovsky spoke for 10 minutes on the government's budget performance before opposition deputies assailed him with accusations of being inebriated.

Ukraine's parliament, where the Regions party holds a small majority against a boisterous opposition which is seeking the release of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko from jail, is often the scene of tussles and even fist-fights among deputies.

(Reporting by Natalya Zinets; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Elizabeth Piper)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ukraines-finance-ministry-denies-drunk-claims-against-minister-101446481.html

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Uncle: Patriots player had link to homicide victim

BOSTON (AP) ? New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez had a connection to a homicide victim found in an industrial park near the athlete's home, but family and officials were mum on the nature of their relationship, two days after police first visited the upscale division.

The body found about a mile from Hernandez's sprawling home in North Attleborough was that of 27-year-old Odin Lloyd, according to a prosecutor's office. His cause of death wasn't released.

Lloyd was a semi-pro football player for the Boston Bandits and had a connection to Hernandez, whose home was searched by police, his family said Wednesday.

Hernandez attorney Michael Fee acknowledged media reports about the state police search of Hernandez's home as part of an investigation but said he and the player wouldn't have any comment on it.

"My son is a wonderful child," said, Lloyd's mother, Ursula Ward, as she cried outside the family home in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood. "He's a family guy. He hasn't done anything to hurt anyone."

Ward would not say how Lloyd knew Hernandez and did not say if police told her how her son died. An uncle said Lloyd had a connection to Hernandez but wouldn't elaborate.

North Attleborough sits on the Rhode Island state line not far from the Patriots' stadium in Foxborough. They referred questions about the investigation to the office of Bristol District Attorney Samuel Sutter.

Sutter's office said investigators were asking for the public's help to find a silver mirror cover believed to have broken off a car between Boston and North Attleborough.

Sports Illustrated, citing an unidentified source, reported Tuesday that Hernandez was not believed to be a suspect in what was being treated then as a possible homicide.

Two troopers knocked on the door of Hernandez's house Wednesday morning, but no one answered. The night before, police spent hours there as another group of officers searched the industrial park.

Later Wednesday, at least seven state troopers searched both sides of a road just off the street where Hernandez lives. The officers used thin poles to pull back plants and search through undergrowth along the road.

Hernandez returned home during the early afternoon Wednesday. He did not speak to a crowd of reporters staked out about 100 feet away.

The Patriots drafted Hernandez out of Florida in 2010. Since then, he has combined with Rob Gronkowski to form one of the top tight end duos in the NFL. He missed 10 games last season with an ankle injury and had shoulder surgery in April but is expected to be ready for training camp. Last summer, the Patriots gave him a five-year contract worth $40 million.

Patriots spokesman Stacey James said the team did not anticipate commenting publicly during the police investigation.

Sports Illustrated reported that the link between Hernandez and the case was a rented Chevrolet Suburban with Rhode Island plates that police had been searching for. The Associated Press could not independently confirm the report.

Lloyd's neighbor Larry Connors said a black Suburban with Rhode Island license plates was towed out of the yard of Lloyd's house after his body was found. Lloyd had been driving it for a few days, but Connors had never seen it before that.

Neighbor Paul Sandefur, a retired transit police officer, said he had known Lloyd since he was in diapers and was at a loss to explain what might have led to his death.

"He'd tease me about coming over to play basketball because I used to tell all the kids I could beat them," Sandefur said. "He was an exceptional kid. It's just inconceivable that something would happen to him."

Both neighbors thought Lloyd worked in construction, and neither knew of any connection between him and Hernandez.

Bandits coach Olivier Bustin, who last saw Lloyd on Saturday at a team scrimmage and heard on Tuesday he had been killed, said he never knew him to be in trouble.

"He was a personable guy, just a guy who was well-liked by everybody on the team," said the coach, who said Lloyd didn't start but played a big role on defense.

Lloyd's sister, Olivia Thibou, said her brother always had her back.

"And, you know, it's just tough that he's not here," she said. "As my mom said, just give us our time to grieve. And I hope that they find out who did it."

___

Niedowski reported from North Attleborough. Associated Press reporters Mark Pratt and Jay Lindsay in Boston contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/uncle-patriots-player-had-homicide-victim-061316549.html

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