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Web Resources |
You can browse a couple dozen culture tests here.
About everything you'd like to know about Almea is at Virtual Verduria; or go direct to the Almeopedia. These are also ongoing models for how you might present information about your world.
Forget nations, it's all about the cities. Read more about Jane Jacobs here.
For language creation, read the online Language Construction Kit or better yet, buy the book.
This guide to chemistry may be of use in working out tech timelines.
There's also my blog, which often covers things relevant to conworlding (which you may recall from the book is: nearly anything).
Charlie Stross's blog often dives into great s.f. analysis, such as why space colonization is unlikely and the tricky problem of how to design a society for a generation ship.
Need a smart calculator? Try Wolfram Alpha. If you have to use the same formula over and over, it's way easier than a calculator, and sometimes it can even find the formula for you— e.g. enter "distance from Alpha Centauri to Sirius".
Wikis
Almeopedia uses MediaWiki software... in my opinion a greater gift to the world than Wikipedia itself. Here's instructions on installing it to create your own wiki.
If you're interested in drawing, you should follow John K Stuff, written by John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren & Stimpy. John K turns out to extremely knowledgeable and punctilious about cartooning, and many of his tips apply to more realistic drawing as well.
If you want to build in Second Life, here is the Creation Portal.
Autodesk Softimage Mod Tool can be found here.
Blender can be found here.
Here's a great free textures library. They're non-tiling but still a great place to start.