Good article
But they forgot a couple of things:
The NJ location of Spielberg's movie may be direct homage to Orson's radio play [btw, Grover's Mills is a real town, a stone's throw northeast of Princeton -- I'll be looking to see if it gets a mention in the film].
Independence Day should get a mention, too. Its plot framework is pretty much the same story, substituting a computer virus for a biological one.