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301s pass most PR, but not necessarily all. This process also takes a bit of time. That said, I have heard of people doing this and it does seem to be a good thing to do, provided there's some similarity to the new site in terms of content (i.e. 301 a tire domain to a real estate domain and it might not give you much long term benefit). The endgame for you should be to add the old domain's momentum to your own.

I think if Askimet doesn't work you should implement the facebook comments plugin.

I was just about to add a reply to my previous post to say the same thing. You are always so articulate, EGOL, it's truly impressive.

First of all, you should try and visit the website using Google Webmaster Tools (with the 'visit as Google Bot' tool). If it shows a HTTP 301 redirect to the .com website, you'll know everything is working fine but your site just hasn't been indexed yet since the change. If it shows anything else (probably the holding page), there might be something wrong with the way you redirect. You can try using one of the plugins to check for HTTP statuses (FireBug and Chrome's developer tools have basic features, FireFox's Live HTTP Headers plugin can show you more). See what is says the HTTP status is, and try and fix it.

MajesticSEO.com has a free tool that gives you new backlinks per day to your site. I'm not a subscriber so I don't know if you pay if they will tell you which backlinks they discovered.