diff --git a/Fastimage.php b/Fastimage.php
index 0d3b9a6..f8ca3f8 100644
--- a/Fastimage.php
+++ b/Fastimage.php
@@ -28,13 +28,22 @@ public function load($uri)
 	{
 		if ($this->handle) $this->close();
 		
-		$this->handle = fopen($uri, 'r');
+		$host = parse_url($uri, PHP_URL_HOST);
+		$stream_context = @stream_context_create(array(
+													'http' => array(
+														'timeout' => 1,
+														'method' => 'GET',
+														'user_agent' => (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']) && $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']) ? $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] : 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)',
+														'header' => "Referer: http://$host\r\n"
+													)
+												));
+        $this->handle = fopen($uri, 'rb', null, $stream_context);
 	}
 
 
 	public function close()
 	{
-		if ($this->handle)
+		if ($this->handle && is_resource($this->handle))
 		{
 			fclose($this->handle);
 			$this->handle = null;
@@ -72,6 +81,8 @@ public function getType()
 					return $this->type = 'jpeg';
 				case chr(0x89).'P':
 					return $this->type = 'png';
+				case "RI":
+					return $this->type = 'webp';
 				default:
 					return false;
 			}
@@ -94,7 +105,9 @@ private function parseSize()
 			case 'bmp':
 				return $this->parseSizeForBMP();
 			case 'jpeg':
-				return $this->parseSizeForJPEG();	    
+				return $this->parseSizeForJPEG();
+			case 'webp':
+				return $this->parseSizeForWEBP();
 		}
 		
 		return null;
@@ -215,7 +228,10 @@ private function getChars($n)
 		$result = substr($this->str, $this->strpos, $n);
 		$this->strpos += $n;
 		
-		return $result;
+		if (function_exists("mb_convert_encoding"))
+			return mb_convert_encoding($result, "8BIT", "7BIT");
+		else
+			return $result;
 	}