If you haven't figured out the online video craze is in full tilt, it's time to get with the program. This is becoming the next "NEXT BIG THING," although if you are in the post-college or younger age group, it has been here for a long time. AOL now has launched its developer program on an open platform basis that will allow real-time submissions and search across AOL and third party platforms and video content owners.

This announcement will not have any significant positive or negative financial impact on any of the Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) and AOL subsidiaries, but it is one of many focused core strategies that is getting the AOL name ready for the next move. Initiatives are ramping fast now and the company is really trying to show it can be just as nimble as the kids over at Google (GOOG) and as savvy as the competition at Yahoo! (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT).

AOL is essentially saying it will be there for the explosive growth in real-time video search. That may not sound as exciting as it is. If you don't recall how fast video can change public opinion, think back to "American Pie" and how a live video feed changed things. That was in a fictional story of course, but that was based on current technology for the year 1999. Digital video technology has come a long way, and the new video compression standards have only contributed more and more to the viral wave of video on the web. Imagine what happens when near real-time amateur video comes out when a politico makes a comment he or she thinks is off camera, and that is instantly available for the world to see.

Through its new AOL Video Search developer program, AOL has made available a set of open video search APIs (application programming interfaces) as well as implemented a system for video content owners to submit feeds to the AOL Video Search index through new AOL Director Accounts. The AOL Video Search Developer site can be found at http://developer.searchvideo.com.

The spies over at CNET have come up with a story that indicates that Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX)'s AOL unit will hook up with Intel to offer a new home system that allows movies downloaded to the PC to play on the TV. Intel has been promoting its Viiv-powerd PCs as the future of home entertainment, but no one has been listening.

Oddly enough, the new Apple home system will do the same thing. The company's new iTV systems will apparently allow movie downloads to be sent wirelessly to TVs from PCs.

Convergence has been a long time coming. And, perhaps, after almost a decade of empty talk, it is becoming a reality. If so, AOL and Apple may be in the vanguard.

The PC and TV have been incompatible devices for so long, that most consumers have never even attempted to take a video download from the internet and play it on a television screen. In a population where very few people can program their own Tivos, it was simple too much to ask.

If the AOL and Apple systems work, they could actually change the way that entertainment comes into the living room. But for this to really happen, the systems will have to be both competitvely priced and easy to use. Otherwise, they will be still-born as early attempts have been.

It is not unusual that both the news on the AOL joint venture with Intel and the AppleiTV have been short on details. Critics will swarm all over systems specs that show products that need to come with a PhD. in computer sciences.

AOL may have an early lead in video downloads that work on a TV screen, but the window for convincing customers that they want such a service may prove very, very small.

Douglas McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.