Integrating Plugins and/or Activating plugins on Installation

Interestingly enough, no one really finds my blogs entertaining as much as they like it’s functionality. I’ve been setting up a number of blogs lately for friends that have realized that sites like Myspace are bull**** and want to have their own thing going. I would like to make the setup process brainless for them. IE. Give them my wordpress directory and install it. So my questions are as follows:

1. How would I go about integrating plugins into WP itself?Something like Assaf Arkin Advanced WYSIWYG Editor then having an options page to change settings. What would be a good starting point for a project like this?

2. If all the plugins were in their folder does wordpress have an option to automatically ‘activate’ them upon istallation? If not, where would I look to code an option as such?

Are either of these even possible? Any and all comments / suggestions are welcome.