Grabbing the most popular technorati tags is there a way?

I believe there is. Technorati provide an API you can use but you’ll need an API key from them. Once you’ve got that, see http://technorati.com/developers/api/toptags.html for details. You should also look at Kailash Nadh’s “Duck Soup” API library here:

http://kailashnadh.name/ducksoup/