Andreas Norman

This widget that displays an archive for the current selected category. On non-category pages a standard archive is displayed.
<ul>
<li>On a post page the widget will only display an archive for posts in that category</li>
<li>On a category listing the widget will only display an archive for posts in that category</li>
<li>On the front page or in a search result or any other page that doesn’t reside in a category a standard archive will be displayed.</li>
</ul>

Subzane Categorized Archive Widget

A widget that displays an archive for the current selected category. On non-category pages a standard archive is displayed.

Tiago Madeira

The website of the brazilian newspaper O Estado de São Paulo has a nice way to 
display news in a retrospective-style (check <a href="http://blog.tiagomadeira.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/estadao.jpg" rel="nofollow ugc">this 
screenshot</a> 
or <a href="http://www.estadao.com.br/especiais/choque-nas-ruas,158638.htm" rel="nofollow ugc">this link</a> 
— Flash required).
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could display WordPress posts in our pages and 
categories in the same way just by using a shortcode? The possibilities are 
many. That’s why I wrote the Retrospective plugin for WordPress.
It has at least two advantages over the version you just saw:
<ul>
<li>Does not require Flash (its implementation uses only CSS and jQuery)</li>
<li>Has a option to respect the (time-)scale of the posts.</li>
</ul>
See Installation for more info on how to use it.

Retrospective

Retrospective plugin displays last posts or posts from a specific category in a nice-looking "retrospective" way using a shortcode.

Subzane Categorized Archive Widget vs Retrospective