How useful would a single-letter domain be? Is, for example, Y.com a worthy investment for, say, the YMCA or someone wanting to set up a site that answers “why” questions? How about domains that use the company name instead of .com? Could podcast.mycompany be a craze that gains ground in the domain game?

ICANN is addressing the single-letter domain question this weekend in Vancouver. The other is already a possibility if enough people put it into flight.

At an issues meeting this weekend in Vancouver, British Columbia, the Internet’s governing agency, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will be discussing the implications of making available single-letter domains, which for all but six early-registered domains, have been reserved by ICANN for possible distribution later.

The six single-letter domains already nabbed are i.net, q.com (Qwest Communications), q.net (Q Networks), x.com (PayPal), x.org (X.Org Foundation), and z.com (Nissan), according to E-Commerce Times.

These domains are potentially valuable to companies who are represented on Wall Street by a single letter, like Citigroup (C) or Ford (F), or even to cable networks like E!. Though not everyone is convinced of their value.

In a related story, Dutch company UnifiedRoot is pushing top-level domains that are in sync with companies or brand names. The company’s site uses examples like news.cnn or luggage.schiphol.

While domain names like these may be especially useful to companies, the difficulty lies in getting ISP’s or ICANN to recognize the new TLDs.

Thanks to Dave at PassingNotes for the hat tip.