As the title says really! I want to learn how to create some of the more advanced aspects of the presentations I am able to download on here. I also think I would like to contribute some ppt's on occasion.

I'm open to suggestions as to whether the format of the learning is online or a book.

I have unfortunately been learning too much about PowerPoint lately, so I think I can help answer your question. I wouldn't recommend buying anything, there are too many great  free resources online. Search YouTube for "PowerPoint training" for some pretty nice videos about the basics.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=powerpoint+training+for+beginners

I'm not sure how complicated you want to make your presentations, but if you want to know about something more specific you can type "How to (blah blah blah) in PowerPoint 20(07 or 10 or 13)" into YouTube or Google. PowerPoint has many more features than people give it credit for, so I would recommend that you think first about what you want to do and try to learn how to do that. You can learn more about the program in the process. Also, instead of just starting completely from scratch, dissect a PowerPoint similar to the one you want to use and see the animations and effects that went into it.

Microsoft's Office Training website is a good source for specific information as well. Make sure to select the correct version of PPT you are using, but there's little difference between them other than the interfaces. Since most people on Waygook use PowerPoint 2007, I would recommend using that to make PPTs to avoid problems sharing. If you have 2010 or higher, you have to be aware of some pretty annoying compatibility issues.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/support/microsoft-office-2003-2007-2010-training-FX010056500.aspx

I hope that was helpful, I would like to think the ridiculous amount of time I've spent learning about this could be useful to someone else!

1.   Make a ppt that uses all of a wide screen TV without black bars on the side. Deign – Page Setup – change ‘slides sized for’ to 16:10

This only works if the PC has a widescreen monitor. If it's an old style 4:3 monitor you'll end up with letterboxing.

2.   Don’t use Themes! They are a pain to edit as they try to think for you.

This is good advice.

I try to keep my presentations as clean and uncluttered as possible. I usually use Century Gothic because the difference between bolded and regular text is very clear, which is useful for emphasizing parts of words and sentences.

Personally I avoid any sort of pictorial background. A solid or subtly graded colour is fine.

As for more the more complicated aspects of making games such as triggers and animation timing - I think the best thing is just to dig into what other people have made and look at what they did. You'll see the same techniques in different places and pretty soon you'll be able to do them yourself.