What do you mean by the pictures not coming out well?
Do you print at home or at a lab?
have you read yur manual?
i sincerely believe that magazines are good for learning texcniques, but basic camera handling is better learned via a book or class.
You might want to see if the library o bookstore has Kodak's Joy of Photography" or "Digital Photography for Dummies". joy was the first book I ever bought, right along with the camera and I have used the dummy series for PS.

I have the dummy book. When I take people pictures, I end up with red eye. I have also taken pictures of a bicycle race (I was on a steep incline so the riders were not fast here)and came back with blurry images. (The weather was 30-40 degrees so I was shivering so the camera was shaking). I take my prints to CVS or Ritz for processing.

The red eye is caused by the flash being too close to the axis of the lens. Several possible cures and ways to reduce:
1- Turn the lights up in the room, this will close down the retina so that the flash will not hit the back of the eye. The red is from the blood vessels in the macula of the eye ball.
2-use the red eye reduction feature if the camera has one. This is a preflash that gets the eye to close before the main flash goes off. This can be a pain as people think that the picture is being taken on this preflash; you need to warn them and tell them to hold the pose.
3-Get an off camera flash that raises the flash unit above the lens about 8-10 inches.
4-PS and many other programs have a red eye removal tool built in. Selec the tool, put it on the eye nd the red is gone.

Blurry pictures are usually caused by too low a shutter speed for the conditions or possibly shutter lag.
To beat the camera shake and subject movement problem try setting your iso to 400 and using a minimum shutter speed of 1/250 second. put the camera in TV mode to do this.
Point and shoot cameras are notorious for shutter lag, the time it takes for the shutter to open and close after you press the buton. All brands of camera are subject to this, it's part of the digital world.To beat this problem you can prefocus on the subject like we did in the good old days.
Pick a point where the subject will be where you want him to be. Just before he gets there, press the shutter release.
Yes, it is a matter of timing and it does take practice. You may find it easier to manualy focus when using this technique.
You may also want to try using the auto fill flash feature of the camera. This will help to stop motion as well.
I am not sure if they are still published, but the Kodak pocket Guide to Photography is a handy carry around book geared to specific situations that you may encounter.
Hope this helps a bit.