following the parse.com tutorial for setting up push notification on android (https://parse.com/tutorials/android-push-notifications). ide is android studio 0.8.9 on mac os
code fixed. think there were three issues:
1) wrong syntax for adding comments. i was using the java/objective-c syntax:
// this is a comment
instead of xml way
2) category should have been
(thank you berserk)
3) needed to add meta-data for notification icon. parse doc say this is optional, but it appears to be mandatory, at least in some cases. (Android - Unable to start receiver com.parse.ParsePushBroadcastReceiver)
(thank you Ahmad Raza)