Amy Gahran just posted Women in Podcasting: 40 New Shows Listed. Cool, something to check out on the plane tomorrow.

Tom Raftery is the guy who runs the IT@Cork National Technology & Business Conference. He called me up the other day and we had a chat and he recorded that and put it up. He had previously asked his readers to send in their questions. They did, including one on open source that Tom didn’t expect me to answer. I answered that, and more, on the podcast.

And, yes, I did promise to kiss the Blarney Stone. I can see how Tom built a successful conference in a country far away from Silicon Valley.

How do you know that John Furrier is going big time? Well, he passed two million downloads and now he has Jason Lopez helping him out (he’s a seasoned radio pro who has been heard on NPR).

By the way, is podcasting’s quality going up? Listen to PodTech.net. It’s as good as anything you’ll hear on commercial radio. Add in IT Conversations and you have two really great audio resources to listen on your portable media player.

What tech podcasts do you listen to?

I was sitting, alone, in the cafeteria here in Silicon Valley tonight at about 7 p.m. when someone started banging on the windows trying to get my attention. “What the hell do they want?” I thought to myself wondering if someone was getting robbed or something or needed help (it was dark outside so I could only see a figure, not a face).

I went outside and who was there? Podcaster extraordinaire Eric Rice! (He’s the founder of Audioblog.com, which is the service that my son and I use when we do our infrequent podcasts).

We caught up and over on his blog there’s a few interesting things to read.

First, I like that tag cloud he has on top of his blog. Turns out that’s a service called, what else, TagCloud. I created a TagCloud of my own.

Also over on Eric’s blog I read that Melodeo has released a new version of its Mobilcast. They claim to be the first company to deliver over-the-air podcast downloads on mobile phones. Eric is building a podcaster network and is delivering exclusive content for this new mobile network.

But the window-banging Rice didn’t stop there. He dragged me away from my computer and said there was a party upstairs. Free wine. He’d sneak me in.

When we got up there, who else was there by TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington. OK, now this is getting freaky. I was just emailing Michael and had no idea he was emailing me from over my head. Literally. He wrote about his side of the encounter here.

Turns out both of them were there for the “Under the Radar” conference party. Wild. It’s just been that kind of week. Oh, and it demonstrates why I like working in the cafeteria rather than sitting in some office somewhere.

And, no, Michael, I’m not going to talk about this.