Allow me to also recomment Fuji for taking pictures at parties and whatnot.

Sensitivity to light is the biggest factor in taking pictures in dark indoor settings like parties and bars and stuff.

Digital cameras have an ISO setting that adjusts their sensitivity to light. The higher the ISO, the more sensitive to light the camera becomes, but also the more noise makes its way into the picture. Little compact cameras have little bitty image sensors, and they make lots of image noise at anything higher than ISO 50 or 100, which isn't particularly sensitive to light.

Now the thing is, if you're taking pictures in a dark setting like that, your flash is only so effective, and the lower the ISO setting the less effective the flash is, plus the camera picks up less light overall from the scene. So if you want to take good pictures in low light you need a high ISO setting, but then the high ISO setting makes a bunch of noise all over the image.

Fuji has a different sensor technology, called Super CCD, that's a lot better at keeping image noise low at high ISO settings. Higher ISO means the camera picks up more light from the overall scene and doesn't need to get the flash to do as much work and you get a nicer looking picture. The Fuji F10 is really damn good at this and is relatively pocket sized. The Fuji Z1 is also pretty good at this and is super tiny.

In fact just recently Josh M asked me to suggest a bar camera and I pointed him towards the Z1. He likes it, and I've played with it a bit, and it's pretty nice.