srcoley

Let’s you select a specific category for featured posts, and manage those selections on the WordPress dashboard.
Most WordPress themes have you manage featured posts by selecting a “Featured” or “Top News” category for your special articles. This method has worked pretty well for both me and others. It’s only downfall is that you must go to edit that post in order to “feature” or “unfeature” it. Well I’m putting an end to that. With this plugin, you can select which posts get featured right on the dashboard.
To put it simply: You can manage categories from the WordPress Dashboard.

Featured Post Manager

Let's you select a specific category for featured posts, and manage those selections on the WordPress dashboard.

Jeff Stieler

Super Widgets let you display the Title, Featured Image, and Excerpt of a selected post or posts in your sidebar.
Narrow down posts to feature by blog (if multisite), post type, or taxonomy.
Show a single post (post/page/custom post type) with the Single Post (Post Type) widget.
Show the most recent post in a selected taxonomy with the Single Post (Taxonomy) widget.
Show the most recent X posts in a selected taxonomy with the Multi Post widget.

Super Widgets

Feature posts in your sidebar.  Select posts by Blog (multisite), individually, by Post Type, or by Tag/Category/Taxonomy.

Featured Post Manager vs Super Widgets