Travelport has talked about its Universal Desktop project for an eternity, but just a few months remain until agents around the world can start playing with it.
Officials behind the scenes are inevitably touting it as the most advanced agency search and booking portal ever created, as you would expect.
So what does it look like?
Well, until now nobody outside of the inner sanctum at Travelport had any idea at all as the project is still in its final stages of development and briefings do not start until at least late-summer 2010.
But step forward Ohio, US-based Clutch Interactive.
The "digital communications agency" posted a series of screenshots on its Facebook page illustrating plenty of the Universal Desktop's design and functionality.
Full credit to Graham Robertson of ProjectWander for discovering the photos and re-posting them on his site a few hours ago.
Oops.
The shots have since disappeared from the Facebook page. Normally on these types of occasions, all parties involved say the shots were of old designs and functionality and should be ignored.
And certainly the second and third shots above look incomplete. Nevertheless, photograph number one looks pretty darn good though.
Such a saga demonstrates the terrifying transparency of social media and what happens when curious bloggers such as Robertson dig this kind of stuff out.
It may well be out-of-date and irrelevant, but Travelport would probably not have wanted even these types of shots appearing ahead of time.
Travelport portfolio director Jason Nash who oversees the Universal Desktop project says drily:
"We are delighted that people seem to be as enthusiastic about the forthcoming Travelport Universal Desktop as we are and we’ll keep you posted on further developments!”
This isn't the first time a contractor has accidently posted screenshots of a high-profile travel project long ahead of launch date. In 2009 a web designer published grabs of work of the much-anticipated VTravelled project by Virgin Atlantic.
NB: International dial-in number for Clutch did not connect and emails bounced back.