Wp-o-Matic and WP 2.2 Broken? / Main Column RSS feed

Hi everyone,
I can’t seem to get WP-O-Matic (or any other similar plugin) working with my 2.2 installation. the site it’s being used for is at http://www.shellypalmerbio.com/wordpress right now; we need to pull the blog feed into the main column so this page can remain current. I’m having a nightmare of a time trying to get any kind of RSS feed to show up there, however; wp o matic, which looked like the most promising one of the bunch, fails to add the feed no matter what I do. I even removed the check for feed url validity and it still wont validate any feeds! Guillermo, the plugin creator, seems very knowlegeable but I can’t raise him on the forums or directly, and I need help. I don’t think its a general RSS access problem, as the site widgets can pull RSS feeds through KB widgets. (though I’ve turned them off for the moment)

The site is hosted on a 1&1 vps with Plesk; I’ve disabled all other plugins, PHP safe mode is not on, I also tried turning off Apache ASP support. (I heard one rumor that the problem might be apache keepalives but I can’t figure out how to turn them off)

Any help either getting the feed from shellypalmerblog.com into the center column or fixing wp o matic would be GREATLY appreciated.