4) NVC is an innovative mix of scrypt/pos/pow. It is one of the older, more original alt's. NVC has itself been copied hasn't it, into Bitbar (don't quote me on that).
No there are sadly dozens of altcoins with that combination, though NVC is probably the first, this hardly count as innovation; these features are taken from other altcoins.
Here's my humble opinion: I like to think of Novacoin as Bitcoin, Litecoin and PPcoin done right. Each of those coins does something right, but only Novacoin does everything right.
