MadCow Technical Services

01/12/2026

This popped onto our radar recently because there was a big transfer that needed to done. See, transferring a couple pictures to say, Onedrive, is no problem. A 20 gig file? Problem.

Enter, Blip. It uses a custom architecture to transfer lots of data, saturating whatever pipe you're using for maximum speed. Oh, did we mention it's also free? This is truly a utility to keep on your belt, whether it's to another computer in the office or to a post house across the country. The best part? It automagically resumes if there's any interruptions.

https://blip.net/

Moving large files shouldn’t feel like a workaround.

01/07/2026

Misplaced your iPhone or maybe it was stolen? This most excellent automation shortcut will save your bacon.

Find your lost iPhone by texting it a trigger word

12/19/2025

When the presents are all opened and you're waiting for that delicious meal to finish cooking, what better use of your time than to clean up your photo library on your iPhone?

We know we have a lot of wasted space with photos of receipts, parking space #'s, pets, screen snaps and of course - duplicates. You could sit down and scroll through that massive library, but fortunately, Apple has included a couple utilities baked right into the Photos app.

Want to attack duplicates? Scroll down in your Photos app to Utilities. If you have duplicates, select it. You'll be presented with the option to "merge" them, quick and easy.

If you're like we are, you screenshot everything and especially the unintended screenshot when fumbling your phone. Scroll down to Media Types and Select Screenshots. You'll see everything you've ever intended and not intended. Select singular or press the Select button up top and swipe select then delete.

Feel free to explore the other options presented and clean those up, too. Enjoy!

12/16/2025

Taking a break from the onrushing shopping frenzy, we thought we'd share a tip to make your life a little easier. Recent changes in Microsoft Office have made your default save location in the cloud on OneDrive. This can be an issue if you're traveling or your internet is out. Fortunately, you can still save your files locally and set that as the default.

To change this so that it always starts in a local folder instead, click on File > Options, navigate to the Save tab in the left panel, check the “Save to Computer by default” box, and then click “OK” to apply the setting.

Now, whenever you go to save a new document, Microsoft Word will automatically offer “This PC” as the storage location.

Stay safe out there as we coast into Christmas.

11/29/2025

After we recovered from a tryptophan coma, we hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving. And for those that participate, Black Friday shopping. It’s been a good year here at MadCow and we wanted to pass along a holiday tip to help you tame your email inbox.

You’ve probably noticed that any and every retailer that has your email address is hitting you with sales and discounts for Black Friday deals. You can use this time to choose those you want off of and scroll all the way to the bottom of the email and hit the ‘unsubscribe’ link. You probably didn’t want to keep getting emails about that singing bass that you bought after too many eggnogs that year.

Happy Holidays from our pasture to yours!

10/17/2025

No, you're not imagining it. Those LED lights don't last a long as the packaging suggests. Here's why.

Yes, you've been lied to about how long LED lights last. But here's how to get your money's worth.

08/22/2025

Facebook is always trying to stick it's nose in your business. Recently it was discovered a couple preferences after an update, are toggled "on" by default. This would allows Meta to scan your photos for whatever reasons.

Here's how to turn it off.

Some Facebook users have noticed new settings that let Meta analyze and retain your phone's photos. Yes, you read that right.

06/06/2025

Nifty little windows utility that makes your taskbar translucent. Nice little eye candy addition.

I've changed my Windows 11 taskbar to be transparent and I'm loving the minimalist vibes!

05/08/2025

A little humor. Well, not really. We’d totally do that.

04/17/2025

Apple has issued a rare emergency update. If you’ve been holding off updating your phone or iPad, you should install this update now. 18.4.1 addresses an in-progress attack.

Give us a call if you have questions.

If you’ve been holding off updating your iPhone (or your other Apple devices for that matter), now is the time to do so as a new series of emergency security updates have been released to fix two …

04/06/2025

Your inbox is under attack by hacking teams in the lead up to April 15th. Be aware and don’t open ANY attachments, especially PDF files that you dont KNOW the sender. The IRS will not be contacting you with emails.

If you think you or your company might be affected, give us a call for a free consultation. Stay safe.

You are now at risk from attack—what to know.

03/28/2025

Regardless of your politics, if you know anything about programming, the shear hubris of thinking you can just "switch over in 2 months" from COBOL to a new codebase is just insane. Millions of lines of code and no clear documentation to follow and relying on generative AI to do the heavy lifting. Oh, and millions depend on the monthly payments this system is in charge of.

Social Security systems contain tens of millions of lines of code written in COBOL, an archaic programming language. Safely rewriting that code would take years—DOGE wants it done in months.