Beginning on the July 15th weekend, about 10 miles of Los Angeles’ 405 freeway will be closed. For those of us that don’t live in L.A., I’m hearing that this is kind of a big deal.

In order to avoid some sixth ring of hell-type apocalypse that will result from uniformed drivers trying to access this stretch of road, the Los Angeles Police Department has launched an advertising blitz.

According to the L.A. Times, the LAPD has held multiple press conferences, sent mass emails, and even bought out radio and TV ads to warn people of the impending “Carpocalypse.”

But those traditional methods of getting out the word aren’t enough so the LAPD has decided to turn to social media to help. They have sent out requests that celebrities with large Twitter followings tweet the traffic news. They say they reached out to Lady Gaga, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore and Kim Kardashian. Between those four power users, about 30 million followers could get the news about the 405 closure.

Ashton has complied, tweeting this yesterday -

Not only has Kim Kardashian tweeted for the cause, but the entire Kardashian/Jenner gang is pitching in –

Lady Gaga is apparently much too busy to help, as she has yet to tweet about the upcoming closure.

“The whole idea is just to re-message the theme of avoiding the 405 area and that it’s going to be a mess if people don’t stay away,” said Lt. Andy Neiman, an LAPD spokesman. “The other message is to take advantage of this weekend to shop, meet some neighbors you never met before, finish that home improvement project you never got around to finishing or have a block party.”

“Twitter is a way to reach that whole demographic that could be oblivious to the 405 closure for that weekend,” Neiman said to the L.A. Times.

Other celebs have gotten the memo. Here are some that have tweeted so far –

So what do you think? Getting out the word via Twitter looks like a great idea to me. What other method of reaching thousands of L.A. residents could be quicker and easier?

Jocelyn Ding, a director of operations at the search giant, wrote late yesterday in a post on the Official Google Enterprise Blog, "Earlier today, the Los Angeles city council voted unanimously in favor of completing the City’s move to Google Apps.  More than 10,000 City employees are already using Google Apps for Government, and Los Angeles taxpayers are expected to save more than $5.5 million."

Ding later continued, "LA’s move to the cloud is the first of its kind, and it’s not surprising that it’s taken a little longer than anticipated to identify and address all of the City’s unique requirements.  We’re very pleased with the progress to date, and are committed to making this a great success for Los Angeles and a milestone for cloud computing."

In fact, Google expects the transition to be complete within the next few months.

If Google can satisfy L.A.’s needs, that could open the door to many more cities and organizations adopting Google Apps.  Of course, more mistakes or delays on the search giant’s part could provide Microsoft or other competitors with an "in," at least elsewhere in the country.

Google’s no doubt got some of its best people working to make sure the L.A. city council isn’t let down.

A group of city employees has been testing Google Apps, and they recently held a meeting to discuss their findings.  City Administrative Officer Miguel A. Santana then wrote in a letter to the chair of the Information Technology and Government Affairs Committee, "At the meeting many of the departments expressed concerns about both the performance and the functionality of the new system."

Santana explained, "Performance concerns focused on the slowness with which e-mails were sent, received, and accessed in the new system.  Functionality concerns focused on features currently available in GroupWise that are unavailable, or significantly different, in Google’s system.  Further, the Los Angeles Police Department indicated that several security issues have yet to be resolved, and that a pilot of its technical support staff must be successfully completed before it can be expanded to the rest of the LAPD."

Of course, Santana also noted that city’s data networks may not be configured correctly, that city employees are using Firefox and Internet Explorer when they’re supposed to use Chrome, and that running Google Apps and the old GroupWise system at the same time isn’t helping anything.  Plus, some of purportedly unavailable features do in fact exist.

Google Apps doesn’t offer other features, however, and the LAPD’s concerns are significant.

So a full implementation of Google Apps has been delayed, and if the situation isn’t resolved soon, it looks like L.A. will have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars (again) for GroupWise licenses.

Big hat tip goes to Leena Rao.

UPDATE: Another city official has written a post on the Los Angeles Google Enterprise E-mail and Collaboration System Blog to say that these rough spots "are part of a normal Pilot and review process and is a normal part of a well-thought out project schedule — most large rollouts (with any technology) are built with flexible timeframes so issues can be addressed. The Pilot and reviews it contains are to ensure that the product meets SOW. It also tests ancillary products to ensure integration. This is all NORMAL stuff happening here and the project is still on track to deliver per the schedule!"

The L.A. City Council approved a $7.25 million Google Apps contract in late October, but not everyone was enthusiastic about the move.  Councilman Paul Koretz displayed a bit of doubt, for example, by referring to both "cutting edge" and "the edge of a cliff."

Now, Randi Levin, CTO for the City of Los Angeles and general manager of the city’s Information Technology Agency, has written a post on the Official Google Enterprise Blog, and she’s looking forward to improved collaboration, easier remote access, and expanded storage.

Plus, it looks like L.A. will save about $5.5 million over the next five years (including $750,000 in electricity costs alone).

If Google’s able to pull off the implementation in a smooth manner (there will be a slow rollout, with law enforcement agencies hanging back), this development could set the stage for all sorts of cities to follow suit.  L.A. might, in fact, represent a key point in relation to Eric Schmidt’s recent "billion-dollar opportunity" comment about enterprise.

Of course, if Google in some way fails, things won’t go so well.  And the L.A. City Council doesn’t have complete confidence in the search giant’s cloud.

David Sarno reported, "The contract was approved pending an amendment that would require Google to compensate the city in the event that the Google system was breached and city data exposed or stolen."

Also, Councilman Paul Koretz said, "It’s unclear if this is cutting edge, or the edge of a cliff and we’re about to step off."

Google’s no doubt putting some of its best people on the job to make sure L.A.’s gamble is rewarded.

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The US Geological Survey listed the quake originally as measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale when it hit the Los Angeles area this morning. Their list of recent quakes now has it at 5.4, with several smaller tremors noted.

People reached for their preferred electronic device and shared the news with their friends. Many turned to Twitter to do so; unlike previous rushes of traffic to the site, the quake and its aftershock of tweets didn’t drop Twitter off the Internet.

The LA Times tech blog composed a long list of tweets that hit Twitter in rapid succession. Though Twitter held up, the Times itself suffered a brief outage.

“‘Strong quake shakes Southern California’ was pushed out by AP about 9 minutes after people began Twittering primary accounts from their homes, businesses, doctor’s appointments, or wherever they were when the quake struck,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said on the service’s blog.

Tweetip published a timeline of tweets, with the first hitting at 2:41 EDT. Many people opted for a single word – Earthquake – in doing so.

“Twitter is simply very fast at disseminating information,” VentureBeat’s MG Siegler said. “We saw this when a large 7.8 earthquake struck China back in May and we