Latest Updater not working

Fresh install of latest EasyBlog on a Joomla 3.2.1 server. It's an intranet so behind a firewall proxy. To get Joomla Updating working, I needed to set a proxy in /libraries/joomla/http/transport/curl.php and also remove libraries/joomla/http/transport/socket.php and libraries/joomla/http/transport/stream.php

When viewing EasyBlog Dashboard, it says can't connect to news server. When clicking updater (I have not yet entered my API key) I get a blank white screen. Is this because the above two transports had to be removed for Joomla Update to work?

thanks, mark