oDesk worked fine. We outsourced a small task, partly to learn how to crowdsource when we have a more urgent need. There were many freelancers, and it was easy to see their qualification with resume, feedback scores and comments, test scores (for a variety of expertise areas), etc. The process was smooth, and reasonable.

One thing was that they had probably too much featuers in place, and they looked complex to me. Maybe it is because it was my first experience, but I would rather like to see simpler interface. Some of them (e.g. Yahoo messenger) did not seem necessary as it was just fine to use Skype (or it could have been Live Messenger) which both parties had already.

In summary, it does seem to be a place where you can find freelancers in design and development.