Ideas are free and it's hard to actually finish and have a working product. Maybe a better idea would be to hold a contest, the winner being the best functioning site/product related to the domain name after say 6 months, and whoever wins get the domain.
I totally agree. I don't get why 37 signals would be at all interested in taking one time $10 payments from Moms and Pops when they have monthly recurring revenue coming in from a bunch of companies. Even if they have the infrastructure, just the support overhead from un-tech friendly folks will be a pain.