The iPod Touch is probably the best portable multimedia device (or even personal assistant device) out there. You can do a lot of things with it, including watching movies, listening to music, reading ebooks , surfing the Web via Wifi, managing your daily schedule and documents, and much more. In fact, the only thing that it does not have is a phone!

But of course, there are some limits to its capabilities. And I’m not talking about the lack of a camera on the older models (the new iPod Touch with the Retina Display of 960×640 got 2 cameras, finally) or other hardware issues. I’m talking about limitations that shouldn’t be there, imposed by software means. There are of course, reasons why Apple put them there: One, to protect the users from breaking the phone accidentally or on purpose, and Two, to limit what the device can do in order to make more people buy the iPhone, which is like a full version of the much cheaper iPod Touch.

While I can understand the former, I simply cannot agree with the latter reason. Thankfully, neither did  a few developers, who created the “jailbreak” process for all Apple devices running the iOS operating system, which of course includes the iPod Touch. You, too, can easily jailbreak your iPod Touch and get much more features out of it than you ever would from a stock one. Here are just a few of the apps you can install on a jailbroken IPod Touch.

Winterboard. Winterboard lets you completely customize the look and feel of your home screen. It lets you change the background, icons and settings. If you ever wanted to have a more personalized IPod Touch, this is the app for you.

Backgrounder. If you’re running the latest iOS 4, you’re lucky in the sense that you get multi tasking support. But those who have an older IPod can still take advantage of this feature on their jailbroken device by installing Backgrounder. This app allows you to run any apps in the background, which actually makes it better than the iOS 4 feature for some users.

asBattery. This is a little app that fixes one quirk of the iOS: the fact that there is no percentage indicator for the battery level in the top right corner. A lot of people want one, and no one can understand what level their battery is only from the small icon. This app fixes that and adds a percentage indicator right next to the battery icon.

AppBackup. AppBackup is a marvelous utility that lets you fully backup the memory of your IPod Touch. With it, you can easily restore your hone to a previous state without any worries or hassles.

SBSettings. SBSettings is a great app that adds an Android-like quick configuration screen, which lets you turn Bluetooth, Wifi, Brightness, SSH and other settings on and off. Now you can easily get quick access to them, without having to go through a ton of submenus.

OpenSSH. OpenSSH is of course, an SSH client, which you can use to connect to any server or remote computer via an encrypted protocol. This is impossible on non-jailbroken devices, but if you have one, you can easily connect to your server and manage the files and how it works. Of course, you only have access via Wifi, but that isn’t a problem nowadays, as there are a lot of hotspots around.

If you need any of the above functionality, you simply have no other choice but to jailbreak our IPod Touch. Of course, there are risks, but they’re minimal and the potential gains far outweigh them. Plus, if you ever need to give your IPod to Apple’s Tech Service, you can always restore the phone to its original state, without leaving any kind of trace.