Stephanie Leary

A widget that lists your most recent posts with excerpts, optionally limited to a category. The number of posts and excerpts is configurable; for example, you could show the titles of five posts but include the excerpt for only the two most recent. Supports <a href="http://robsnotebook.com/the-excerpt-reloaded/" rel="nofollow ugc">the_excerpt Reloaded</a> and <a href="http://sparepencil.com/code/advanced-excerpt/" rel="nofollow ugc">Advanced Excerpt</a> for excerpts with HTML formatting.
New! Supports displaying post thumbnails along with excerpts. Widget options let you place the thumbnails above the title, in between the title and the excerpt, or below the excerpt.
Now on <a href="https://github.com/sillybean/Recent-Posts-with-Excerpts" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub</a>.
<h4>Translations</h4>
<ul>
<li>Serbo-Croatian (sr-RS) by <a href="http://www.webhostinghub.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Borisa Djuraskovic</a></li>
</ul>
If you would like to send me a translation, please write to me through <a href="http://stephanieleary.com/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.

Jack Reichert

This plugin was developed to display excerpts from random posts in a category. jQuery is used for fading the plugin in and out. It’s a great way for displaying testimonials of clients or just giving a snapshot of content from your site.
Shortcode added as of version 1.4
The most basic use is: <code>[reFader]</code> this will use the default options. 
Here is an example of all the options in use 
 [reFader title=”Random Excerpts” cat=”23″ type=”post” amount=”5″ length=”50″ duration=”5000″ linked=”no” url=”http://www.jackreichert.com/”]
This will show 5 (amount) posts (type) from category #23 (cat). It will show 50 (length) words from each post and fade out/in every 5 seconds (duration). It will not link each title to the corresponding post, but it will link all the titles to this plugins page (url).

Random Excerpts Fader

Creates a widget that takes randomly a number of excerpts from a category of your choice and fades them in and out.

Recent Posts with Excerpts vs Random Excerpts Fader