As far as brand goes, Canon and Nikon are the most reputable and have been making cameras for the longest.
Pentax and Olympus are equally good at point-and-shoot cameras, and are specialist camera brands. As long as you stick to these brands, you're not likely to go very wrong.
You should look for and compare these specifications and pick the combination you like best:
Megapixels - 7-10 is pretty good for everyday use
Zoom - between 3-5x is pretty much standard for your price range i think.
Memory - i would recommend brand that use SD memory because it's the most widespread/compatible, but it hardly matters because most cameras are USB compatible
Automatic / Manual settings - you can cameras with fully manual settings, lots of personalised settings (macro, portrait, night photos etc) or ones with less, if you're not going to be fussy.
Anti-shake - most brands have some sort of anti-shake system, some work, some don't. I'm not sure about the brands you've suggested. I guess this is something which you have to try for yourself.
I have been using a Canon IXUS and it's served me very well over the years.