The error you were having in your original thread is due to your hosting provider not having your php.ini settings set to allow_url_fopen.
You need to contact your hosting provider and have them set the allow_url_fopen option to on.
http://us.php.net/filesystem
I will not be changing this piece of code to support any curl functions. fopen is pretty straightforward and easy to code and not all hosts have curl installed in their libraries. Also, curl is more beneficial if you have to authenticate and we don't really need to authenticate to this data. But, in case others have an issue with being able to connect, your "workaround" is definitely a good note for others.
Thanks mate.