Mapping -Arrows to selecting characters/lines

Question

I started to use vim recently, but I miss the character/line selection methods from other text editors. By default vim maps ,

Answer 1

Slightly different from progo's answer - this gives the same feel as mac apps normally have:

nmap  v
nmap  v
nmap  v
nmap  v
vmap  
vmap  
vmap  
vmap  

The differences being switch to visual mode instead of visual line mode, and not losing the initial up/down etc keystroke.