Tom Barber

Tom Barber started out as a journalist working for the likes of GQ, Tatler and the Evening Standard before founding Original Travel in 2003 with two friends, Nick Newbury and Alastair Poulain. Initially the offering was long weekends but the company was soon pushing boundaries and destinations to include holidays from Latin America to Australia, everything from family holidays to corporate incentive trips.

Original Travel has been voted Guardian/Observer Best Tour Operator or Best Short Break Operator in each of the last four years, and the only award Tom wishes the comapny had won but hasn't is the Best Travel Website award! It's in the process of updating its site, and award or no award, Tom still thinks it's one of the best sites in the travel industry. Tom suggests you judge for yourself and his son George now makes an appearance as the little boy carrying the suitcases on the Family Holidays tab.

TOM'S FAVOURITE WEBSITES

Dropbox -  I might be a tragically late adopter on this, but Dropbox has transformed my life! I work from home some days and having a Dropbox makes sharing stuff between office and home incredibly easy. It's also made receiving hi-res images from hotels and tourist boards a piece of cake, whereas once we had to rely on CDs of images posted to our office from around the world.

Ancestry.co.uk - A bit anoraky, and not cheap, but ancestry.co.uk seems to me like the sort of thing the internet was designed for. Take millions of people all around the world researching their family trees, and everyone helping each other out so you can link to the research someone else has already done and fill in huge swathes of long lost ancestors in a few minutes. Beware the odd bum steer from wrong information, but this is still an incredibly useful tool as we all frantically try to put ourselves into context.

Ebay - Officially addictive, and always worth a try when searching for something a bit random. There are a lot of people out there, and one man's junk is often another man's gold dust.

Nike+/Nikerunning - Until about a year ago the thought of jogging on a regular basis filled me with dread. I'm very much of the ‘if there's no ball involved why break a sweat?' school of thinking, but I'm something of a devotee of both Apple and Nike, and their whole collaboration has turned me into a running geek. The concept? Buy a pair of compatible Nike trainers and the Apple's Nike+ iPod kit, slip the sensor into the sole of the shoes, and the receiver onto the bottom of your iPod nano and every time you run your details - time, pace, distance, calories burnt etc - are stored on the Nike+ site so you can monitor progress and (hopefully) improvement. It's been just the motivation I needed.

Handpicked Collection - The ultimate one-stop shop when buying presents. Men are notoriously difficult to buy for, and also useless at buying presents full stop. This site solves both problems in one swift and easy-to-use process. Handpicked Collection's team of experts sift through the mountains of present and gift ideas out there and select the very best on the market. You can choose according to gender/age/price to see a selection of the most original, fun presents around. One of the great time (and effort) savers.

Google - Obvious but potentially life-changing. On weekends I've been researching for a biography I'm writing on my great-grandfather and the sheer depth and breadth of information I've unearthed in just a few clicks on Google is astonishing. I pity anyone who had to research anything before the great Google appeared on the scene.

21 June 2011