About the Growl notification: A popup that tells me “3 unread articles” is of no use, it is just noise. If the Growl notifications are to be useful, they should display the articles headlines themselves.

That’s right, one notification for each new article (until a preset limit, e.g. 5). Those notifications can be configured to be as discrete as you like, and to disappear after a couple of seconds. Clicking a notification should bring up the corresponding article in Gruml.

These newsflashes are enough to keep me up-to-date with what’s happening in the world, without causing to much distraction.