littlejon

LJ Random or Recent is a WordPress plugin/widget that allows you to display a list of Random or Recent posts depending of the type of pages that is being displayed. This plugin can also assist your site for SEO by digging up and making your older content relevant.
The idea was taken from the iNove theme which by default has a similar setup in the sidebar, I just wanted a little bit more functionality plus the ability to put the widget anywhere on the page with any theme.

LJ Random Or Recent

LJ Random or Recent is a Wordpress widget that will display a list of Random or Recent posts depending of the type of pages that is being displayed.

pjgalbraith

An advanced version of the WordPress Recent Posts widget allowing increased customization.
Features Include:
<ul>
<li>Display post thumbnails, with customizable size.</li>
<li>Display post excerpt, author, comment count, and more. </li>
<li>Provides options to trim the number of characters in the title and excerpt.</li>
<li>Override the post order to order by; date modified, title, post ID, random, comment count etc.</li>
<li>Exclude or include specific posts, authors, tags, or categories.</li>
<li>Also includes a simple template parser so you can override the default output making custom styling easy.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Documentation</h3>
See documentation at http://www.pjgalbraith.com/2011/08/recent-posts-plus/

LJ Random Or Recent vs Recent Posts Plus