Stephanie Leary

This widget will list random posts from a chosen category. You can choose how many posts to display, and whether to show the excerpt or the full content in addition to the post title. You may also link the widget title to the category archive if you like.
<h3>Translations</h3>
Belorussian (be_BY) by <a href="http://fatcow.com" rel="nofollow ugc">FatCow</a>. 
Romanian (ro_RO) by Web Geek Science (<a href="http://webhostinggeeks.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Web 
Hosting Geeks</a>)
If you would like to send me a translation, please write to me through <a href="http://sillybean.net/about/contact/" rel="nofollow ugc">my contact page</a>. Let me know which plugin you’ve translated and how you would like to be credited. I will write you back so you can attach the files in your reply.

Random Posts from Category

A widget that lists random posts from a chosen category.

lupka

This plugin allows you to create a widget that will display the title/date/excerpt from random posts in a specified(or open-ended) date range. It can also be used outside of a widget to create custom loops of random posts within a date range. The following can be specified:
<ul>
<li>Number of posts to display</li>
<li>Whether or not to show dates</li>
<li>Whether or not to show excerpts</li>
<li>Excerpt length (number of words)</li>
<li>Start date and End date of posts to randomize</li>
<li>Whether or not to always use current date as end. (Allows you to include new posts without editing settings every day)</li>
<li>Option to use relative time instead (To chose from random posts from last week, year, etc.)</li>
<li>Category to choose posts from. (Example: Random posts from sports category in the past week. This is the original reason I needed a plugin like this. Comes in handy for the newspaper site I run.)</li>
</ul>
Please contact me if you run into any issues, either via email (lupka31@gmail.com) or Twitter (http://twitter.com/lupka) 
For latest FAQs/info visit: http://alexchalupka.com/projects/wordpress/random-posts-widget/

Random Posts Within Date Range Widget

Widget that displays the title(w/ link), date(optional), and excerpt(optional) of random posts within a selected date range.

Random Posts from Category vs Random Posts Within Date Range Widget