I am navigating down to the Groups (forums?) that I want to follow and adding the top of the Group to Bookmarks. Then i create a bookmark in my browser to that page. It at least groups the important forums together for me, in some rough way like a Yammer listing of groups. Of course this does not have the Unread Count, but I can get over that for now.
Edit: There is a count of "New", I'm not sure if that is new posts or new replies.
Rob.
