How to make your Bluetooth speaker sound better

One great thing about Bluetooth speakers is you can use them to learn about how room size and acoustics affect a given speaker's sound quality. Experiment with placement and you'll quickly learn that where you put a speaker in a room can make a big difference in the sound, for better or worse. That's true for all speakers, but since BT speakers tend to be small and light, they're easier to move around.

Start by putting the speaker on the floor in the middle of the room, and you'll hear that it makes more bass than it does sitting on a table. It will also probably sound dull and lacking in detail down there. Next, try putting the speaker in a corner, on the floor, and it will make even more bass. After that, try putting it on a table in the corner, and you'll get back the missing treble, but the speaker will probably sound better a couple of feet away from the corner. Move the speaker to each wall in the room, again at the same 3-foot height, and see if one wall sounds better than the others. Then move it a foot at a time along that wall, and you might see that one or two spots might be better than the others. So you see, everything changes the sound; a little experimentation might yield surprising results.

Battery-powered Bluetooth speakers are the easiest to move about, but if you move any speaker from a large room to a small tiled bathroom, and don't adjust the volume control, you'll be surprised how much louder the speaker sounds. Without adjusting the volume setting, take the speaker outside; it will seem much quieter, and you might not even hear it outdoors. Again, the environment changes the way a speaker sounds -- and the differences are far from subtle.

Of course, you can try the same experiments with wired speakers; it's just a little harder to do, but definitely worth the effort. The better the speaker, the bigger the differences you're likely to hear as you change positions, and the changes will be more pronounced with stereo speakers (BT speakers are nearly always mono or single-speaker systems).

After you try out some changes, please share your experiences in the comments section below.

Hide and unhide apps from your iPhone's purchased list in iOS 6

In the past, you could pull off this maneuver right on your phone. Now, it requires a trip to iTunes. Find out where in iTunes you need to go to hide and unhide apps from your purchased list.

Turns out, I've been giving you bad advice. Or at least outdated advice. In my post on this topic from last year (in the heady days of iOS 5), I showed you how you could simply swipe on an app on your purchased list right on your iPhone to hide it. For no good reason at all (at least any that I can see), iOS 6 did away with this functionality. Perhaps iOS 7 will bring back the ability to cull your purchased list from your phone, but for now, it requires a trip to iTunes. *sad trombone*

Open up iTunes and click on the iTunes Store button. Next, click on the home button if the Store didn't open to this view. In the right column, under the Quick Links header, click on the Purchased link. Click on Apps from the top of this view, and you'll see a grid of your purchased app. Hover over an icon and a small X button appears in the upper-left corner. Click the X to hide the app. The app will be hidden from the purchased list on your phone the next time you take a look at your purchased list; no sync is necessary.

To reverse course and unhide an app, click on the button with your username in iTunes and select Account. Next, in the iTunes in the Cloud section, click the Manage button that sits to the right of the Hidden Purchases. Select Apps and you'll a grid of icons for all of your hidden apps, each with an Unhide button. Click the button and the app is returned to your purchased list.

Restrict volume on iPhone, iPod, and iPad

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If your kid is using an iPhone, iPod, or iPad to blast music at unsafe levels, you should consider setting a limit on their maximum volume. I mean, they'll hate you for it -- but they'll also hate having tinnitus in their 20s, right?

In the above video, I'll walk you through the steps of lowering the maximum volume limit on any iOS device, as well as locking that setting in place using a password of your choosing.

The first step in the process is to lower the maximum volume by tapping Settings and then scrolling down and selecting Music. Next, tap Volume Limit and pull down the volume slider to the maximum volume level you've decided on. Then, tap the back arrow until you're back at the main menu.

To lock the volume limit with a password, head back into Settings, but this time tap General, and then select Restrictions. Next, hit Enable restrictions at the top of the page and create a four-digit password. After that, scroll down to where it says Volume Limit. Tap that, change it to "Don't Allow Changes" and then back all the way out to the main menu.

That's all there is to it. If you want to ease the sting of restricting their volume you should seriously consider treating them to an upgraded pair of headphones. Below, you'll find a roundup of some of CNET's favorite picks for under $50.