Biz Break: For Obama, dinner with Apple, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Yahoo CEOs

Today: President Barack Obama is meeting with Silicon Valley'smost powerful tech executives. Plus: Silicon Valley's median houseprice edged up last month, but the Bay Area market remaineddominated by "distress sales."

Tech executives' dinner with Obama

President Barack Obama is headed to the Bay Area today to meet"with business leaders in technology and innovation," according tothe White House website.

The closed event will be at an undisclosed "private residence" inthe Bay Area. The White House hasn't released the invitation list,but according to a note posted with Obama's daily schedule, he plansto "discuss our shared goal of promoting American innovation anddiscuss his commitment to new investments in research anddevelopment, education and clean energy."

Air Force One is scheduled to land at San Francisco InternationalAirport just before 6 p.m. According to news outlets including theMerc and Bloomberg News, Obama is planning to meet with some of themost powerful executives in Silicon Valley, including Steve Jobs,CEO of Apple, the Cupertino maker of Mac computers and "i" devices;Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Palo Alto social networking powerhouseFacebook; Eric Schmidt, CEO of Mountain View Internet juggernautGoogle.

According to Bloomberg, spokeswomen for Oracle's Larry Ellisonand Cisco Systems' John Chambers confirmed the two CEOs also will beat the dinner. Bloomberg -- quoting an unnamed administrationofficial -- reports the invitation list also includes John Doerr, asenior partner at Silicon Valley venture capital giant KleinerPerkins Caufield & Byers; Carol Bartz, CEO of Sunnyvale Internetcontent powerhouse Yahoo; Twitter CEO Dick Costolo; Netflix CEO ReedHastings; Genentech Chairman Arthur Levinson; Stanford UniversityPresident John L. Hennessy; and Steve Westly, the former eBayexecutive and California state controller who is now a cleantechventure capitalist.

According to our friends at The Associated Press, White Housepress secretary Jay Carney said the technology sector has been "amodel, really, for that kind of economic activity that we want tosee in other cutting-edge industries in the U.S. where jobs can becreated in America and kept in America, and that's what he wants totalk about."

According to the Merc report, Obama will travel to Hillsboro,Ore., (near Portland) to tour an under-construction semiconductorfactory with Intel CEO Paul Otellini.

Silicon Valley home sales

We have a mixed report today on the real estate market in SiliconValley (and throughout the Bay Area) from San Diego tracking firmMDA DataQuick.

January is always a slow month for home sales, so it's difficultto predict the direction of the market based on these numbers,DataQuick President John Walsh warned. However, he noted, "Lastmonth's activity was a continuation of trends we saw much of lastyear. The market is still dominated by distress sales and bargainhunting. We're seeing little discretionary activity."

Throughout the Bay Area, foreclosures were at their highest levelin almost a year. Investors snapped up bargains, bringing a drop inhome prices. Here in the Valley of Heart's Delight, however, themedian price for a resale single-family house edged 0.5 percenthigher year over year to $492,500. The median condo price in SantaClara County, though, plummeted 16.5 percent to $251,500.

Developers sold just 253 new homes last month in the Bay Area."Builders just can't build homes that can compete in price with thebargains out there, especially foreclosure resales," Walsh said.

Mortgage rates: They dipped lower this week, at least for mostmajor loan types. Nationwide, the average rate on 30-year fixedloans was 5 percent, down from 5.05 percent last week, but up from4.93 percent a year earlier, according to mortgage giant FreddieMac.

Average rates also dipped from last week on 15-year fixed loansand five-year hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages. One-year ARMs,though, were slightly higher.

Google's Android army

AT&T will begin selling Motorola's Atrix 4G -- a new smartphonerunning Google's Android operating system -- on Monday, according toAP.

Now that Verizon Wireless also has the iPhone 4 (AT&T previouslywas the exclusive U.S. carrier), AT&T intends to put more emphasison new Android phones.

More Google news: The company is giving a boost to social searchresults, according to a blog post today by Mike Cassidy, Google'sproduct management director, and Matthew Kulick, a product manager.

"Social search results will now be mixed throughout your resultsbased on their relevance (in the past they only appeared at thebottom)," they wrote. "This means you'll start seeing more frompeople like co-workers and friends, with annotations below theresults they've shared or created."

Google will be pulling in relevant posts from Twitter, YouTube,Flickr, blogs and personal websites. The social search features onlywork, though, for users who are logged in to Google.

Even more Google news: Google bought 48 companies last year indeals worth a total of $1.8 billion, according to a Merc report thisafternoon. Google plans to keep up the same pace for acquisitions in2011.

Silicon Valley tech stocks

Up: Google, Intel, Cisco, eBay, Yahoo.

Down: Apple, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, VMware, Gilead Sciences.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index: Up 6.02, or 0.2 percent,to 2,831.58.

The blue chip Dow Jones industrial average: Up 29.97, or 0.2percent, to 12,318.14.

And the widely watched Standard & Poor's 500 index: Up 4.11, or0.3 percent, to 1,340.43.

Check in weekday afternoons for the 60-Second Business Break, asummary of news from Mercury News staff writers, The AssociatedPress, Bloomberg News and other wire services. Contact Frank Russellat 408-920-5876. Follow him at Twitter.com/mercspike.