Alex Rainert

Product & design person, introvert, Liverpool fan, easy laugh. VP Traveler Products @ Tripadvisor Past: nytimes, foursquare, google itp@nyu. This is my home on online and a place to capture my thoughts.

The Finite Scroll 008: Requiem for the NYT Audio app; One Battle After Another; the AI bubble; discovering David Foster Wallace; designing a board game.

Welcome to The Finite Scroll - a weekly-ish lets call it monthly newsletter for curious people. It should take less than 5 minutes to read and give you something that piques your curiosity. It’s been a while since the last newsletter. I blame the always‑crazy, post-Labor Day, back‑to‑school madness that is September. I felt moved to write as today the sun has officially set on a product that defined a distinct four‑year chapter of my career. I spent a total of seven years at The New York Times

Oct 4

The Finite Scroll 007: Therapy is easier than ever to access; a oral history of enshittification; the risks of agentic AI; switching to Apple Music and a floating pool comes to NYC.

Welcome to The Finite Scroll - a weekly-ish newsletter for curious people. Each issue should take between 5 and 10 minutes to read. Oh boy. The craziness of the last month of school and summer has resulted in an unintended hiatus from writing this newsletter. Between the kids finishing school and getting them off to camp, a 10 day trip to San Sebastian (a truly wonderful place that I would recommend to anyone) with our son and his travel soccer team to play in a tournament called The Donosti Cu

Aug 2

The Finite Scroll 006: Is pop culture worse than it’s ever been, rolling cheese, a restaurant that looks like a sketchbook and a bangin' summer BBQ mix.

Welcome to The Finite Scroll - a weekly-ish newsletter for curious people. It should take less than 5 minutes to read and give you something that piques your curiosity. For those tuning in after last week where I shared that I was running for our local school Board of Education along with some reasons why, I’m thrilled to report that I won one of the two seats and will be starting my three year term on July 1st 🎉 I'm grateful to all the people who helped me make it happen - hosting a lawn si

May 30

The Finite Scroll 005: Why I've been MIA (I'm running for our school board), AI and the future of education, explore musical DNA and a camera that shoots... poems?

Hello everyone! For those keeping score at home, this "weekly-ish" newsletter has been dormant the past ~4 weeks. The reason for that is that after weighing it the past 2 years, this year I decided to throw my hat in the ring and run for one of two seats on our local Board of Education. Since making that decision in mid-April, it's been a 4-week sprint of a campaign where I've had to learn a lot, stretch myself, create signs, flyers and a simple webpage, and all that has taken up almost all of

May 17

The Finite Scroll 004: My first product job, a new Aura frame, what comes after the cellphone and a Mike White nightcap.

Welcome to The Finite Scroll - a weekly-ish newsletter for curious people. It should take less than 5 minutes to read and give you something that piques your curiosity. I ended up missing a week on the ol' newsletter as we were away in Curaçao with the kids for Spring Break and I was very excited to turn off my devices and relllllaaaax. Back at it now with a short look back at my first real "Product" job. "Like Friendster for your cellphone" - Last week my friend and former co-founder Dennis

Apr 19

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