Aaron D. Campbell

Used to create a customizable rotating slideshow highlighting certain posts or 
pages. You can choose which posts or pages are featured by simply checking a 
checkbox on the write posts/page screen. The plugin uses the new post thumbnail 
functionality added in WordPress 2.9.
Requires PHP5.

Featured Content Showcase

Used to create a customizable rotating slideshow highlighting certain posts or pages.  Uses jQuery, which comes with WordPress (no conflicts).

Paul Clark

JonRaasch

Yet Another Featured Posts Plugin (YAFPP) provides an easy interface to feature posts in your WordPress blog. Simply check the ‘featured stars’ associated with each post in WordPress’ post listing screen to feature or unfeature a post. This info is posted immediately to your WordPress settings using AJAX.
This interface for featuring/unfeaturing posts is a big step up from other featured posts plugins, which make you enter a string of IDs.
Additionally, YAFPP provides a number of output options for WP developers – you can echo out or return an HTML formatted string of featured posts, return an array of featured post data or manipulate WordPress’ The_Loop.
Using these display options you can easily display a thumbnail with each featured post, or otherwise modify the list of featured posts according to your setup.
Not a developer? Beginners can also display thumbnails with their featured posts by installing <a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/yet-another-photoblog/" title="Yet Another Photoblog" rel="ugc">YAPB</a>. YAFPP interfaces nicely with YAPB, and allows you to display YAPB thumbnails along with your normal featured posts output.
Please read the <a href="http://dev.jonraasch.com/yafpp/docs" title="Read the complete documentation" rel="nofollow ugc">complete documentation for YAFPP</a>
<h3>License</h3>
Copyright 2009-2010 Jon Raasch – Released under the FreeBSD License – <a href="http://dev.jonraasch.com/yafpp/docs#licensing" rel="nofollow ugc">License details</a>

Yet Another Featured Posts Plugin (YAFPP)

Yet Another Featured Posts Plugin provides an easy AJAX interface to feature posts, with thumbnails & other display options for featured posts.

Featured Content Showcase vs Yet Another Featured Posts Plugin (YAFPP)