I have to strongly disagree and I think the author has gotten it wrong. There have been quite innovative alt coins in this first wave, the most prominent ones

I have to strongly disagree and I think the author has gotten it wrong. There have been quite innovative alt coins in this first wave, the most prominent ones being Namecoin, Litecoin, Peercoin, Primecoin, Freicoin and possibly Anoncoin as they have all found niches that they can cater to. Litecoin has the second largest market cap and has the honour of being the first major Scrypt coin Peercoin has the third largest cap, it introduced Proof of Stake as an alternative for Proof of Work and in the latest round of alt coin investment it did the best in terms of market cap increase to coins ratio. Namecoin has a niche as a alt DNS Primecoin allows Proof of Work to be useful rather than selfish to the network as is the case with Bitcoin Anoncoin recently integrated i2p and Zerocoin to provide greater anonymity for users Freicoin had a great idea with demurrage, very capitalist, but it failed because people want a currency that's either going to hold or appreciate in value and also because 80% of the funds were held by the Freicoin foundation rather than the community. There's also a second wave of altcoins coming, ones not based on Satoshi's algorithms. The best example would be eMunie, which from what I hear is very close to release.