Flash Screensaver, loading external pictures

Apologise for my first post being a glaring cry for help, however I'm looking for advice more that anything I suppose.

For my university course we've (as a small group) have decided that we'd like to build a Screensaver in flash, that is basically a slideshow of pictures.

However this slideshow must be dynamic as it displays pictures people have uploaded to a website. Put simply the flash screensaver must connect to a webserver and either

a) download an XML file generated automatically containing the locations of the pictures

OR

b) connect to a database every time finding the pictures locations and displaying them

Obviously I'm thinking A would be the more economic and quicker.

However my questions to you are, as I'm rather new to flash, but have a fair grasp of PHP and ColdFusion;

- Is it possible for a flash file (screensaver) to connect to an outside server and download the pictures to display on a clients machine, I've done a little research in XML security not being able to access files outside of its domain which may pose a problem.

he difficulty of this task for someone new is not something I'm blissly ignoring but hey I like to chuck myself in at the deepend.

Any advice would be greatly apperciated...

(post wouldn't be complete without shamelessly including :mrt: , tried to fit him in legitametly above but couldn't see how)

Thanks