Are you sure you have the correct port, port is open, etc?
Try telnet to the host/port and see if you can connect.
salfter@files:~$ telnet localhost 8844
Trying ::1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.0
HTTP/1.0 401 Authorization Required
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 15:31:46 +0000
Server: joulecoin-json-rpc/v0.9.2.2-beta
WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="jsonrpc"
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 296
"http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/loose.dtd">
Error
401 Unauthorized.
Connection closed by foreign host.
That's about what I'd expect, given that I'm not sending the username and password. "Server: joulecoin-json-rpc/v0.9.2.2-beta" indicates that I'm talking to the right port, at least.