How to schedule background tasks in Play with Akka. Example below sends an email every 5 seconds

application.conf

# This is the main configuration file for the application.
# ~~~~~

# Secret key
# ~~~~~
# The secret key is used to secure cryptographics functions.
# If you deploy your application to several instances be sure to use the same key!
application.secret="foobar"

# The application languages
# ~~~~~
application.langs="en"

# Global object class
# ~~~~~
# Define the Global object class for this application.
# Default to Global in the root package.
application.global=Global

# Logger
# ~~~~~
# You can also configure logback (http://logback.qos.ch/), by providing a logger.xml file in the conf directory .

# Root logger:
logger.root=ERROR

# Logger used by the framework:
logger.play=INFO

# Logger provided to your application:
logger.application=DEBUG

# Akka
# ~~~~~
akka.default-dispatcher.core-pool-size-max = 64
akka.debug.receive = on

Build.scala

import sbt._
import Keys._
import play.Project._

object ApplicationBuild extends Build {

  val appName         = "chain-mail"
  val appVersion      = "1.0-SNAPSHOT"

  val appDependencies = Seq(
    "org.codemonkey.simplejavamail" % "simple-java-mail" % "2.1"
  )


  val main = play.Project(appName, appVersion, appDependencies).settings(
    // Add your own project settings here      
  )

}

Global.scala

import javax.mail.Message.RecipientType
import org.codemonkey.simplejavamail.{TransportStrategy, Mailer, Email}
import play.api._
import play.api.Play.current
import play.api.libs.concurrent._
import play.api.libs.concurrent.Execution.Implicits._
import scala.concurrent.duration._

object Global extends GlobalSettings {

  override def onStart(app: Application) {
    Logger.info("Application has started")
    startAwesomeBackgroundTask
  }

  override def onStop(app: Application) {
    Logger.info("Application shutdown...")
  }

  def startAwesomeBackgroundTask = {
    Akka.system.scheduler.schedule(0 seconds, 5 seconds) {
      val email = new Email()

      email.setFromAddress("FooBar Daemon", "[email protected]");
      email.setSubject("Alert!");
      email.addRecipient("Foo Bar", "[email protected]", RecipientType.TO);
      email.setTextHTML("<img src='cid:wink1'><b>There was an alert!</b><img src='cid:wink2'>");

      new Mailer("smtp.gmail.com", 465, "[email protected]", "password", TransportStrategy.SMTP_SSL).sendMail(email);
    }
  }
}