A Letter to the Polygraph Profession

To the Profession:

We (Ralph & Nadine) have made some difficult business and personal decisions.

Out of respect for those who like it when people get to the point, this letter is going to be all business. Understanding the ‘why’s’ of this business letter will be important to some of you. A more personal letter that should answer many of those questions will follow later.

The term downsizing just doesn’t seem to fit a mom and pop shop like our Polygraph Place, but that really is the best way to describe what we are doing. What does that mean for you? Maybe nothing, but please read through the following list of changes to our paid and free services.

Business Services

Website Design-Hosting: TRANSITIONING - WordNet Solutions (the web design/hosting portion of our business) has merged with CorData, a trusted business partner for 5+ years. CorData will be fulfilling all existing contracts plus they have a seasoned web development & technical support team ready to meet your upcoming and future design-hosting needs. Learn more about CorData

* For all existing clients, an introductory letter from CorData will be coming once we have completed the necessary transitions. In the meantime, continue to send you website-hosting changes to me as usual at detector@polygraphplace.com.

Business Printing: CLOSED - The Polygraph Place will no longer be offering printing services. This includes business cards, letterhead, signage and graphic design.

Advertising: UP & RUNNING - The original polygraphplace.com website will continue with its current advertising opportunities including basic listings, featured listings, state banners, polygraph specialist banners, run of site banners and special placement advertisers.

Polygraph Community

Polygraph Place Forums: UP & RUNNING. The forums, especially the private forum for examiners, fills a necessary function in our community. It is the only place where polygraphers can discuss their ‘unofficial’ views on the events that are directing or affecting our profession, regardless of location or affiliation. I plan to offer free hosting for this forum for years to come, but I hope to soon turn over the operation and direction of the forum to the community itself. Please feel free to start an ‘ideaforia’ discussion in the private forum on how to do this with the least amount of chaos and greatest amount of common sense.

Real Polygraph Lie Detection News listserver & Blog: ON HOLD; with the exception of an occasional announcement, news of special importance or closeout sale item.

Polygraph Merchandise & Instrumentation

Polygraph Place Store: CLOSING - The online store will remain open with remaining inventory available for purchase online until March 12, 2010. No Returns or exchanges.

Polygraph T-Shirts: CLOSEOUT - All T-shirt designs still closeout priced at $10 each. No more will be printed so when they are gone, they are gone. http://store.polygraphplace.com.

Polygraph Technique Guides: PRE-ORDER ONLY - We do have a few technique guides left in stock that you can buy now on the store until March 12. After this stock is depleted, we will re-order once we have sufficient offline pre-order commitments. http://store.polygraphplace.com

PICS – Polygraph Instrumentation Consignment Sales: CLOSING – Our only remaining inventory are two analog instruments. Still available for purchase online until March 12, 2010. http://store.polygraphplace.com

That’s it for now. We will be moving out of our offices over the weekend and our ability to communicate will be sporadic. If there are any urgent concerns, please email detector@polygraphplace.com. I will be checking that email regularly.

Ralph & Nadine Hilliard
The Polygraph Place

What's New on the Real Polygraph Blog

1. Upcoming Polygraph Seminars

We have added a new area on the blog for Upcoming Polygraph Seminars (See gray colored area on right side of blog) This will be a running list that is updated weekly. If your state association seminar is not listed, please send the information to us at detector@polygraphplace.com and we'll make sure it is included in our next update.

2. How the blog 'CONTENT LABELS' feature works

You may have noticed the CONTENT LABELS on the right hand side of this blog. These labels are important and will be me even more so as the blog grows over time. These labels are put on each story/article that is posted here. They make it easy to find any posts related to a particular topic. For example, to find past posts that include information on voice stress, you can look at the labels and you will see there is a label 'Voice Stress Analysis (2)'. The (2) refers to how many posts have the Voice Stress Analysis label. If you click that label, the blog will show you the two relevant posts on voice stress.

3. Nerd Note Tip - Make your online life easier by using the 'Find' tool on any web page

• You've typed your search term 'voice stress' into your browser.
• You get back a list of related web sites and click one.
• The page opens and you find miles of written text.
• You are forced to skim/read the entire document to find the parts specifically related to 'voice stress'.
• Not only is this frustrating but a huge time muncher, am I right?

NO MORE! The keyboard shortcut Ctrl-F comes to your rescue. This works for all browsers that I have used - Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc. After you start using this keyboard shortcut, you'll wonder how you got along without it. To activate while browsing any website, hold down the Control button (usually labeled Ctrl in lower left and right of keyboard) and then press the 'F' key on the keyboard. This will open the 'Find' tool. Type in your phrase 'voice stress' and click 'next' on the find tool. This will highlight the first instance of that phrase in the page. Click next again and it will take you to the next instance of that phrase. And on and on until there are no more and it starts over at the top. Try it. I've included a visual aid below. This image shows the find tool and highlighted phrase.

To All Relevant Issue Subscribers

Our profession has several fine publications distributed monthly, quarterly, yearly etc. What we have been missing are the daily snippets of pertinent information as well as a venue that reaches beyond our small community borders to the general public.

I hope this blog will begin to fill that gap. Please help me fill this blog with Polygraph Articles, News Items, Meetings, Elections, Job Openings, Studies, Research, Definitions, Media Appearances, Legal Issues and anything else beating at the heart of polygraph. Send me anything and everything, just please remember to write using as little polygraph jargon as possible so we can be understood by the widest audience. Thanks in advance for your participation. Send any info for submission to detector@polygraphplace.com.

This will be a work in progress. Feedback is desired and change is expected.

Ralph Hilliard - PolygraphPlace.com