title: android: running a background task using AlarmManager
body: <p>I am writing an app which needs to periodically check the server for new messages and notify the user. I have seen some examples using AlarmManager to hit a BroadcastReciever which seems like the right thing to do, but i cant seem to get it to work.</p>
  
  <p>Can anyone show me a step by step tutorial for this sort of thing (repeating alarm which triggers some kind of background code that fires a Notification)?</p>
  
  <p>TIA</p>