Everything that is not in .com .net .org .de and is not a domain hack is a junk.
cctld's are the new frontier. Take a look at growth rates and internet penetration in latin america and asia (india, pakistan, etc) and assume most of the people there prefer doing business on a local domain. Especially those countries that don't have english as a first language.
I have/had several single chars in peru for example; single chars are valuable for several reasons; not only can you start a url-redirect service from them:
- investment value in the local market (peru has 30 mln inhabitant
s - 7,636,400 Internet users as of Mar/08, 25.8% penetration, per ITU)
- seo value in both the local as the international market because the are short
- branding value
Most people seem to forget about the local market value. I you would take the time to actually develop in such markets you'd see that such local domains can be of great value (not only short ones)