I found the Cartographers' Guild, which is a very friendly forum for cartography enthusiasts to post their maps. Unfortunately you can't see any file attachments as a guest user, but if you make a free account the site is a gold mine for maps of all kinds.
On the Guild site there is a great tutorial on how to make maps with GIMP (a free Photoshop alternative) without needing a digital tablet or knowing how to draw. I've been spending some time on that. Here's my progress so far.
You might recognize the map. I swiped the outline and rough mountain layout from Dragonlance's continent Ansalon. I traced the map and mountains and flipped it upside down. So far I've only added the 2 deserts and the tundra up north. I have a hand sketched map of where most of the terrain and nations and are going to be, but no scanner, sorry. The human empire will be in the north-eastern area of the map, bounded by the large inlet and the islands. The large desert is home to the dragonborn (4th Edition's core draconic race). The smaller desert will be the former elven forest. South of that, across the small sea will be the tiefling lands - heavy forest and mountains. Steppe filled with goblinoids is to the west of the human empire, and there are many smaller nations in the islands to the east. I haven't planned out any of them yet, but I think the area is ripe for piracy.
I realize that some of the geographic features might not be logical (deserts are usually on the east side of mountains, etc) but this world will have, uh, different weather patterns (that's the ticket) and magic, so I feel like I have an excuse.
I saw another documentary on Templars. It didn't really have anything new, but I jotted down a couple of notes. I also got my hands on Wizard's Presents: Races and Classes, which had some cool tidbits of background info. I'm thinking of stealing the names of the tiefling and dragonborn empires - Bael Turath and Arkhosia. Arkhosia had the western half of the continent, and Bael Turath the eastern, divided by the mountains. That'll help dictate the kinds of ruins are in each area.
I am definitely going to use the 4e gods too, but most of them are new and I have very little info on them. It's kind of hard to plan for them right now.
I should really go back through my notes and start writing up formal ideas.
