10. In September's round-up, the good people of GOOD magazine won our affections for their mash-up of the journeys of the world’s great explorers. Beautifully designed and great fun.

11. So much more than a search engine - have you checked out Google maps recently? We love the little orange man icon who whips you straight to Street View to see your chosen location in 360-degree technicolour, the walking versus driving directions to plan your city break amble, and the hotel finder tool (type "hotels in X" in the search box and select "Businesses" in the search options dropdown. When the hotels are plotted on the map you can click on the pointer icon then through to "more info" for details, reviews, photos and maps).

THE CHEAP SEATS

12. If the frequent flyer miles aren’t adding up as quickly as you’d like, bargain hunters might want to try www.codes.co.uk. The site has a travel section listing vouchers with airlines, tour operators, cruises, hotels and more, with discounts, bonus miles, sales etc. The downside – you have to work for your bargain. Links often go through to the provider’s homepage, so you’re left to search for the deal yourself, and some are outdated.

13. In these cash-strapped times a good, cheap hotel that's central and clean is gold dust. We couldn't recommend HostelBookers.com highly enough. Its reader ratings sort the wheat from the chaff.

BLOGS & COMMUNITIES

14. Want to indulge in the travails of the criminally rich - will it be Whistler or Vail this season, and where to breakfast without the hoi polloi in New York? Step forward Extravigator, one of the sites we featured in September that's definitely not for backpackers.

15. Save your inbox from RSS overload and log onto Straightuptraveler.com, featured in our August round-up. It lists the latest travel features from esteemed travel publications such as ourselves, plus the likes of Gridskipper, Globorati and National Geographic.

16. A travel community site with a difference: www.worldreviewer.com uses hand-picked travel experts from around the world from the founders of Travel Intelligence. Great use of

WHERE TO STAY

17. In July we reported on Chic Retreats and we're pleased to see it is going strong, with its boutique offering of hotels with fewer than 30 bedrooms around the world. Not quite as slick as rivals Sawdays, Mr and Mrs Smith and i-escape.com quite yet, but a great resource nonetheless.

18. A month beforehand we heralded the launch the Good Hotel Guide website, celebrating 31 years of priceless, impartial hotel recommendations in Great Britain, Ireland and the Channel Islands.

THE WOODEN SPOONS

19. When Uptake.com launched in June we thought it would have the likes of Tripadvisor shaking in its boots because of the site's stellar management team. So much for the “Google for travel”. The online travel community and deals aggregator has barely made a mark among the online UK travel community and has scant recognition on tagging sites including digg and delicious. The US bias of content maybe the reason - it's far from global at this stage.

20. "Is Twitter the new Facebook?" screamed the Evening Standard earlier this month. The resounding answer was no - and as far as the online travel commmunity is concerned, we'd have to agree. Twitter is too short and too banal as a source of usable travel tips - if you want tips from real travellers, try Tripadvisor, Thorn Tree, TravelBlog, Gridskipper and countless others.

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