The Typological Database System (TDS)

Some of the categories of variables catalogued by TDS.

The Typological Database System (TDS) is a really sweet resource for typological data, and it would be silly not to mention it early on in this blog. It's basically a meta-database, combining and cross-indexing information from 14 existing typological databases, and covering a total of 1,166 languages (though not all information is available for all languages). Its sources include the Anaphora Typology Database, the UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database, the World Color Survey, the Person Agreement Database, the Graz Database on Reduplication, and many others, giving a good mix of phonological, morphosyntactic, and semantic phenomena. On the right you can see a screenshot showing some of the topics covered. The web-based interface is particularly nice, and friendly for getting your hands on the raw data. My only beef is that it doesn't work with Chrome. 

You query the database by adding search parameters to a "query basket". This lets you build up complex requests like "give me all languages with SOV word order and no agreement in noun phrases, and show me their syllable structure templates" (result: 18 languages with known syllable templates). You can display the results of your query in various ways, and most importantly, download them as a simple CSV file.

Results of a complex query.

Here in Chicago, the Utrecht-based server can sometimes seem sluggish, but the guys running it are very responsive, if you ever need to ask them something by email. I pointed a bug out to them and it was fixed within a week.