Android background process (Service)

I hope anyone has any idea of this question because it has been driving me insane.

I have this service which I call IssueNotifier, and it has some methods in it:

public void onCreate()
{
    super.onCreate(); 
    startService();

    //initiate preferences to get values
    prefs = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(getBaseContext());
    choice = Integer.valueOf(prefs.getString("bgProcessPref", "15"));
    delay = choice * minute;
    if (VIEWISSUES_ACTIVITY != null)  
        Log.d(getClass().getSimpleName(), "ServiceTest started");
}

public void onDestroy()
{
    super.onDestroy();
    stopService();
    if (VIEWISSUES_ACTIVITY != null)  
        Log.d(getClass().getSimpleName(), "ServiceTest stopped");
}

private void startService() 
{ 
    final Handler handler = new Handler();
    final Runnable runnable = new Runnable() 
    {
        public void run() 
        {
            if(VIEWISSUES_ACTIVITY.getNewIssues() > 0)
                VIEWISSUES_ACTIVITY.sendNotification();
        }
    };
    timer.scheduleAtFixedRate(new TimerTask() 
    { 
        public void run()
        { 
            handler.post(runnable);
            System.out.println(delay);
        } 

    }, delay, delay);
}

private void stopService()
{
    if(timer != null)
        timer.cancel();
}

VIEWISSUES_ACTIVITY is another Activity which will start this service, and it has its method sendNotification() which will notify the user if new messages has arrived:

    //just pass the reference to the service
    IssueNotifier.setMainActivity(this);

    //start the service
    startService(new Intent(this, IssueNotifier.class));

All this code works fine, but开发者_如何学C my problem is that I don't want VIEWISSUES_ACTIVITY to start this Service, but rather another Activity to do it, when I try to start the Service with another activity it doesn't work because sendNotification() is in the VIEWISSUES_ACTIVITY activity (it must be there). So how I can achieve my goal?

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try :

Context.startService()

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Implemented sendNotification() (my own method) in the Service instead of Activity, this is the way to do it.