The Relationship between Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial Intelligence

Are machine learning and artificial intelligence necessarily related? Can you have one without the other? Andrea Hill posed this thought provoking question on her LinkedIn page. Andrea is a decorated product development strategist that posts questions on her feed as conversation starters. I learn a lot from reading her articles. This question was particularly intriguing to me, because I hadn’t really considered the difference in detail. I know what both AI and Machine Learning are, but I must confess I often use the terms interchangeably even though they technically mean different things. I certainly was ill-prepared to discuss the differences … Read more

Hardening Your WordPress Site

Today, CIO.com and countless other web sites reported on the recently discovered vulnerabilities in WordPress 4.7.1 that allowed hackers to deface millions of pages through the REST API that is included in WordPress. If you aren’t aware, you absolutely need to update your WordPress sites to 4.7.2 if you haven’t already. In addition to keeping your WordPress patches and plug-in patches current, you really should install a solution such as WordFence as an added layer of security. Be sure to also sign up for their newsletter to stay on top of the latest security news. In addition to the many WordPress … Read more

More SMTP Server Options for Developers

Several years ago, when I was focusing almost exclusively on SharePoint administration and development, I published a blog post about how to setup an SMTP server for SharePoint using SMTP4Dev. It is one of my most popular posts of all time, and the product is still a must have for any developer who needs to test email functionality without access to a test SMTP server. Recently, while working on a WordPress project with a colleague, we needed to test some email functionality in WordPress the same way we used to in SharePoint. The trouble is that we setup our WordPress … Read more

Test SMTP Server for SharePoint Outgoing Email Settings

I have been trying to find a good solution for a test SMTP server for SharePoint for some time.  Like many others, I have unique requirements including: 1) I run a SharePoint development instance on my Windows 7 laptop, 2) I run SharePoint test instances on virtual machines, and 3) I do many SharePoint demos from my laptop — sometimes without an internet connection.  Since SharePoint requires you to use a SMTP server that allows anonymous access, that somewhat limits one from using an ISP account as well.  It is frustrating to demo a workflow without the ability to send … Read more