Hmm... one of my hosting companies disabled the PHP option allow_url_fopen, which would normally allow a programmer to open, include or otherwise use a remote
file using a URL rather than a local file path. One option is CURL.

Another:... i connect to my hosting company via Putty/SSH....I do a:

-)   mkdir php
-)   mkdir src
-)   cd src
-)   mkdir php
-)   cd php
-)   wget http://us3.php.net/distributions/php-5.1.2.tar.gz (see php)
-)   tar -xzf php-5.1.2.tar.gz
-)   rm php-5.1.2.tar.gz
-)   mkdir php5libs
-)   cd php5libs
-)   wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/libiconv/libiconv-1.10.tar.gz (see libiconv)
-)   tar -xzf libiconv-1.10.tar.gz
-)   rm libiconv-1.10.tar.gz
-)   wget http://surfnet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/mcrypt/libmcrypt-2.5.7.tar.gz (see mcrypt)
-)   tar -xzf libmcrypt-2.5.7.tar.gz
-)   rm   libmcrypt-2.5.7.tar.gz
-)   wget http://xmlsoft.org/sources/libxml2-2.6.23.tar.gz (see xmlsoft)
-)   tar -xzf libxml2-2.6.23.tar.gz
-)   rm   libxml2-2.6.23.tar.gz
-)   wget http://xmlsoft.org/sources/libxslt-1.1.15.tar.gz (see xmlsoft)
-)   tar -xzf libxslt-1.1.15.tar.gz
-)   rm libxslt-1.1.15.tar.gz
-)   wget http://surfnet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/mhash/mhash-0.9.4.tar.gz (see mhash
-)   tar -xzf mhash-0.9.4.tar.gz
-)   rm mhash-0.9.4.tar.gz
-)   wget http://www.zlib.net/zlib-1.2.3.tar.gz (see http://www.zlib.net/)
-)   tar -xzf zlib-1.2.3.tar.gz
-)   rm zlib-1.2.3.tar.gz
-)   wget http://curl.haxx.se/download/curl-7.15.1.tar.gz (see curl)
-)   tar -xzf curl-7.15.1.tar.gz
-)   rm curl-7.15.1.tar.gz
-)   wget ftp://alpha.gnu.org/pub/gnu/libidn/libidn-0.6.2.tar.gz (see libidn)
-)   tar -xzf libidn-0.6.2.tar.gz
-)   rm   libidn-0.6.2.tar.gz
-)   wget ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/mail/imap-2004g.tar.Z (see mail)
-)   tar -xzf imap-2004g.tar.Z
-)   rm imap-2004.tar.Z
-)   cd libiconv-1.10.tar.gz
-)   sed -e "s/SSLDIR=\/usr\/local\/ssl/SSLDIR=\/usr/g" <src/osdep/unix/Makefile >src/osdep/unix/111
-)   rm -rf src/osdep/unix/Makefile
-)   mv src/osdep/unix/111 src/osdep/unix/Makefile
-)   make slx
-)   cd ../libiconv-1.10
-)   ./configure --enable-extra-encodings --prefix=/ ETC ....

in other words : just compile my own php version with all libs... what a brilliant solution !