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A spokesperson for the Norwegian company told us that on Saturday morning, four days after the posturing, downloads of Opera 8 reached 1,050,000 and that von Tetzchner was 'embarking on his swim as we speak.'

The new software was launched Tuesday and the company claimed the rush to download it 'exceeded its wildest dreams'. It said its servers were maxed out delivering as many as 120 requests per second, resulting in the company forking out for more equipment to handle the demand.

Von Tetzchner should have had some idea of the potential rush for Opera 8 before making such rash promises: nearly a million copies of the beta had been downloaded beforehand. By the Thursday, downloads of the official version had already topped 600,000. It was then that von Tetzchner

'I take this challenge very seriously, but after three laps at Bislett Bad [public pool] on Saturday I realised, as I was heaving like a whale, that I should probably have started the training a little bit earlier,' says a slightly nervous Jon S. von Tetzchner. 'I am hoping that my extra pounds of excess body fat will create enough buoyancy to keep me afloat and insulation to keep me warm.'

The spokesperson said that updates on the swim would be online within half an hour or so (before 4pm GMT), but couldn't comment on the stroke. 'No, I don't know what the national stroke is of Iceland,' she said.

Von Tetzchner will swim for around six hours a day. It will most likely take somewhat longer to cross the Atlantic than the 70 days needed in a previous crossing by someone more athletic.

As well as faster load times and improved rendering, Opera 8 includes support for voice commands and anti-spoofing technologies.

In comparison, open source rival Firefox topped 1mn downloads in the first day when version 1 was released last November.

Updates on the swim and downloads of the new browser are available from the company website.