Edwards Air Force Base has launched a video podcast, Dateline Edwards, the first video podcasts in the Department of Defense, according to the base.

“We’re very proud of’Dateline Edwards and have been looking for ways to expand its distribution,” said Dawn Waldman, 95th ABW Public Affairs chief of electronic news. “Soon after we started the show, it was picked up by the Pentagon Channel, but was still unavailable for most television viewers. The new video podcast now allows anyone with an Internet connection to automatically download the program to (his or her) home computer.”

“The audio podcast was the first base-specific podcast in the Department of Defense, and it’s still the only one,” said 1st Lt. Brad Kimberly, 95th ABW Public Affairs deputy chief. “The new video podcast follows the same precedent we set back in 2005. It is the first video podcast produced about a specific installation in the DoD.”

Bandwidth limitations prevented launch of the new video podcast until recently.

“We’ve been ready to launch this video podcast since November 2005, but because our Web site was hosted locally, we were unable to post large video files without degrading network services on the base,” Lieutenant Kimberly said. “Now that the Web site has migrated to the Air Force Public Web, we can finally post these files without worrying about these bandwidth issues.”

“In the 16 months since we launched the original podcast, the numbers of downloads have exceeded our wildest expectations,” Lieutenant Kimberly said. “On the average, our audio podcast is downloaded 2,000 times per month. Our hope is that even more people learn about the amazing things we are doing at Edwards through the video podcast.”